Shortcrust pastry made with vegetable fats query

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vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
Has anyone done it?

While buying Dellzeq's recommended culinary delight in an asioan supermarket I came across some tins of halal corned beef which means that I can make a halal corned beef an onion pie for one of my muslim colleagues.

The tinng is I've only used lard based pastry in the past and that's a non starter for the proposed pie.

Does vegetable fats e.g. Trex work?

I don't want to waste pie making time unnecessarily.
 

Berties

Fast and careful!
with the so called health connections of eating animal fats, trex is used more and more,with the right recipe you won't tell the difference,but i have also had to change flours for celiac flour,and the pastry gets a bit tough,but trex gives a nice result,
i am trying to source vegan wine at present,for a non animal product using believer,as a lot of wine is cleared with egg whites ,getting a nice red and white is being hard to get ,but we are nearly there now,very admirable of you to go to such a effort for your friend and i am sure they will appreciate your effort:hungry:
 

ASC1951

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
Trex certainly reckon you can, although they don't go as far as a corned beef pie>
http://www.trex.co.uk/recipes/savoury-pies-and-tarts/

As for vegan wine, Berties, most of the supermarkets do vegan wine, although if a 'nice red and white' means going over £15 a bottle you'll be in a wine merchant not a supermarket. Within the everyday price range, I personally rate Morrisons - whose Head Buyer is a Master of Wine - and all their vegan bottles are marked on their website. So are Majestic Wines' http://www.majestic.co.uk/find/Vegan-is-Vegan
 

theclaud

Openly Marxist
Location
Swansea
What exactly is Trex made of? They claim it no longer contains hydrogenated oils, but there is absolutely no information on their website about what it is or how they make it solid at room temperature.
 

Pat "5mph"

A kilogrammicaly challenged woman
Moderator
Location
Glasgow
Has anyone done it?

While buying Dellzeq's recommended culinary delight in an asioan supermarket I came across some tins of halal corned beef which means that I can make a halal corned beef an onion pie for one of my muslim colleagues.

The tinng is I've only used lard based pastry in the past and that's a non starter for the proposed pie.

Does vegetable fats e.g. Trex work?

I don't want to waste pie making time unnecessarily.

Can you not use Ghee to make your pie? You can buy Ghee in all Asian grocery shops (here at least, not sure in your neck of the woods)
 

buddha

Veteran
I've used olive oil spread with good results. Just put the tub in the freezer overnight and then cut into cubes.
As ever, I think the key is not to over work the dough.
 
OP
OP
vernon

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
What exactly is Trex made of? They claim it no longer contains hydrogenated oils, but there is absolutely no information on their website about what it is or how they make it solid at room temperature.

I'm not too concerned about hydrogenated fats as long as the stuff is pork product free.
 
OP
OP
vernon

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
Can you not use Ghee to make your pie? You can buy Ghee in all Asian grocery shops (here at least, not sure in your neck of the woods)

There has too strong a flavour to use. I have access to some of the best Asian supermarkets on the country and can get hold of stuff that I didn't even know existed like a faecal bulk tonic. I suppose it could be cement powder to thicken the consequences of the runs but I digress.
 

theclaud

Openly Marxist
Location
Swansea
I'm not too concerned about hydrogenated fats as long as the stuff is pork product free.

I'm sure it'll work fine. A flatmate of mine used to make good shortcrust pastry with half butter and half Trex. I just find it rather sinister. I've just dropped them an email.
 

ASC1951

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
I have access to some of the best Asian supermarkets in the country and can get hold of stuff that I didn't even know existed like a faecal bulk tonic. I suppose it could be cement powder to thicken the consequences of the runs but I digress.
You'll be meaning East End's packets of isagboal seeds? aka Psyllium, to you and me. I have them in my home-assembled muesli, along with lin seeds, poppy seeds etc, not because there is anything wrong with my internals but because I like the taste - and they are actually rather good for you in moderation.
 

buddha

Veteran
Top tip! I would never have thought of doing that. I once used an American recipe for pastry using olive oil and it was a disaster, and even with the fact that American flour is very different from UK flour, I just gave up.
Actually ... I use (the tasteless) olive oil for making normal shortcrust sometimes - for tarts;) etc.. Straight from the bottle. And it's been fine. Sometimes adding a pinch of baking powder to make it a little 'lighter'.
This thread is making me hungry:hungry:
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
What exactly is Trex made of? They claim it no longer contains hydrogenated oils, but there is absolutely no information on their website about what it is or how they make it solid at room temperature.

I have a bottle of coconut oil which is solid at room temperature, except on very hot days. It would certainly be solid kept in a fridge.

And some olive oils solidify slightly in the bottle on the shelf, so they are on the edge of being solid.
 

Fab Foodie

hanging-on in quiet desperation ...
Location
Kirton, Devon.
What exactly is Trex made of? They claim it no longer contains hydrogenated oils, but there is absolutely no information on their website about what it is or how they make it solid at room temperature.


It's the solid fat crystals you need to stabilise the pastry structure, they're also important in bread and cake manufacture too.
As Arch states, you can of course use naturally hard oils such as coconut or Palm, but they are expensive. (The sensible thing to do would be to take cheap and plentiful oils and fully hydrogenate them (no trans fats) to get hard fats and then blend them with softer oils, but since the media mis-informed the population that won't happen).

The other way that I am aware of is a process called 'Interesterification:

Fats/oils consist of a molecule of Glycerol to which 3 fatty acids can be attached by a reaction called esterification. Fatty acids come in different lengths from 4 Carbon atoms long (giving butter it's distinctive whiff) to 22 carbon atoms long and may be either saturated (giving hardness) or unsaturated (giving fluidity). During interesterification, you 'simply swap the fatty acid chains around to create distinct species where for example each Glycerol molecule has 3 saturated long chain fatty acids attached rendering them harder and others have shorter chain or unsaturated fatty acids rendering them fluid at room temp. Seperation of the 2 fractions is a case of cooling them to a certain temp and spinning-off the hard crystaline molecules.
Or something like that!
,Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesterified_fat
 
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