Hi, Thank you Lisa for recommending sialis.org. They have a LOT of great suet recipes. This is what they say about lard vs. vegetable shortening: "(Beef or Sheep) Suet vs. (Pig) Lard vs. Vegetable Shortening (Crisco, etc.): All work in suet recipes, as long as you adjust the dry ingredients (e.g., flour) to keep the texture crumbly. Vegetable shortening has a longer shelf life. Suet in its raw form should be avoided. Beef suet may turn rancid when temperatures exceed 70 degrees. When melted and clarified, beef suet is called "tallow." Tallow is less likely to go rancid over time; however it is not easily digested by birds because it is high in saturated fats. Some birders are concerned about the health impact of using vegetable shortening. * A nutritionist at the San Diego Zoo indicated that there is no health risk associated specifically with vegetable oil. * Dr. Sean Pampreen, an avian vet in Marlborough, CT, indicated he did not think that vegetable shortening used as a binder in suet (which is only a supplemental food for wild birds) would cause digestive problems, especially since sunflower, millet and peanut are about 45-56% oil. * Bill Whittaker of Four Nature's Keepers says saturated fats (such as in suet) are more difficult/require more energy for birds to digest than unsaturated fats (such as in vegetable shortening). They also found in field tests that after a familiarization period, birds prefer vegetable shortening. * Dr. Kirk Klasing, Professor of Avian Nutrition at UC Davis, said that very high amounts of fatty acids are difficult to emulsify by the bile, lowering digestibility. Adding a source of unsaturated fats, such as vegetable oil or lard, improves digestibility (e.g., 80% tallow, 20% vegetable oil or lard is a good combination - you can adjust the proportions to give the melting point desired). Peanut butter also works to increase digestibility of tallow because it is high in unsaturated fats. He was not aware of any evidence for a laxative effect of vegetable oil. Like tallow, vegetable shortening is solid at room temperatures. However, the hydrogenation used to make shortening results in lots of trans fatty acids. Though we don't know for sure, it is likely that the trans fatty acids are less healthy than "natural" cis fatty acids (unhydrogenated oils). In chickens, high levels of trans fatty acids deplete antioxidants in the tissues. It would be best to avoid high levels of vegetable shortening. * Crisco does make a zero-trans-fat shortening (in a green container.) * Another alternative is soybean shortening without additives, at as low a melting temperature (less saturation) as you can use to make an acceptable food. In terms of protein content, suet has about 0.4 grams of protein/oz. in it; lard and vegetable shortening have none. Both suet and vegetable shortening have about the same amount of calories and fat content. Beef suet has more saturated fat which may be harder to digest. JL Peterson found bluebirds preferred recipes made with suet. A friend reported bluebirds in her area preferred Crisco-based suets. Crisco does offer a zero-trans fat product. If you're concerned about using either of these ingredients, you can replace them with extra peanut butter until the mixture reaches the desired consistency." So, I will definitely be using vegetable shortening, I'm going to see if they have an organic version at the health food store. It just doesn't feel right to me to help out some animals by feeding them other animals. I'm also going to use raw peanuts and seeds instead of commercial peanut butter, like the birds would naturally eat. Cooking food kills all the enzymes which are so necessary for cells to be able to use the nutrients in the food. Here's the page where I got this info: http://www.sialis.org/suet.htm#crisco Best wishes, fellow bird lovers! April Here is a link that might be useful: Sialis info on crisco/vegetarian suet

Here is an article I found very informative in my search for info on pie crusts. She spent a lot of time actually baking with lard, oils, goose fat, and even suet. November 15, 2006 Heaven in a Pie Pan: The Perfect Crust By MELISSA CLARK A FEW years ago, I achieved perfection in a pie crust and it smelled like pig. Not in a muddy, barnyard way, but with a very subtly meaty, nutty aroma. Carefully confected with part butter and part freshly rendered lard, this pie pastry was everything baking-book authors and bloggers wax poetic about: a golden-brown-around-the-edges epiphany richly flavored and just salty enough to contrast with the sweet apple filling, the texture as flaky as a croissant but still crisp. It shattered when you bit it, then melted instantly on the tongue. The only problem with my masterpiece, I told my guests as they licked the crumbs off their plates, was that I was never, ever going to make it again. Because what they didnt see was the outsize effort that went into acquiring and preparing the not-so-secret ingredient: leaf lard, the creamy white fat that surrounds a hogs kidneys. The veritable ne plus ultra of pig fat, its far superior to supermarket lard, which is heavily processed stuff that can have an off taste. But leaf lard is hard to track down (I special-ordered it from a friendly butcher) and a headache once you get it. Step one: pick out any bloody bits and sinews, chop the fat into pieces, and render it slowly in a double boiler for eight hours. At the end of the day, be prepared for a kitchen that smells like breakfast at a highway diner, and a pan full of dangerously molten fat crowned with cracklings. The leaf lard may have made great crust, but, like homemade cassoulet and puff pastry, this was a culinary Everest I felt no need to climb twice. Everest became a lot more manageable when I discovered that rendered leaf lard was available at the Flying Pigs Farm stand at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarkets on Saturday and by mail order. With this convenience at hand, I decided to have a pre-Thanksgiving pie crust baking binge to see whether, with the prep times and mess not being a factor, lard pastry was really the best when tested next to my favorite standby, an all-butter crust. Or was my memory of the lard pie crusts sublimity simply a hallucination caused by long hours of porcine toil? And while the kitchen was a floury mess anyway, why not test a variety of other fats to see how they affected the flakiness and flavor of the final crust? With fat as my variable, I decided to keep all the other ingredients in the crust as straightforward as possible. That ruled out using a mix of flours with different protein levels (like bread flour, cake flour and Wondra). For this pie, I went with all-purpose all the way. But before I started baking, I did some research in the pie crust recipe canon. Most crusts were a combination of shortening and butter, or all butter, so I started there. I first made five crusts: all-butter; all-shortening (I used the trans fat-free kind now on the market); 50-50 butter and shortening; 70 percent butter to 30 percent shortening; and vice versa. Crisp, flaky and sweetly luscious with deep, browned flavor, the all-butter crust was the hands-down favorite. The shortening crust, however, was a bust among tasters. Even when combined with 70 percent butter, all agreed that the unpleasant greasy film the shortening left on the palate was not worth the vague texture improvement. Shortening is much less expensive than butter. Is it popular with bakers because of the cost? Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of "The Pie and Pastry Bible" (Scribner, 1998), gave another explanation. Because shortening is manufactured for stability at extreme temperatures (both hot in the oven and cold in the fridge), it is very easy to work with, she explained in an interview. "Shortening crusts enable you to get fancier decorations that will hold up when you bake," she said. Once she mentioned it, I realized that even the quickly crimped borders on my shortening crusts stayed pert in the oven compared to the butter border, which melted into Gaudí-like undulations. With round one going to butter, I next experimented with oil crusts inspired by the Mediterranean appeal of a pie pastry scented with extra-virgin olive oil holding a caramelized pear-pomegranate filling. I tested several olive oil variations, chilling the oil in the freezer before cutting it into the flour, and trying other desperation measures like adding egg to one, baking powder to another, and some butter to a third. Then I went on to test canola oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil and ghee. Not one managed to even get close to a minimally acceptable flakiness level. I had better luck using chilled mixed-nut butter (you could use any natural nut butter, such as peanut, hazelnut, cashew, almond and so on). Combined with regular butter, it turned out a marginally flaky, cookie-like crust with a toasted nut flavor that goes particularly well with pumpkin pie. A dozen or so pies down, it was finally time to pull out my hero, the rendered leaf lard. I pitted it against an array of animal fats beef suet (the fat surrounding the kidneys), duck fat and processed supermarket lard just to see what would happen. The processed lard was not available at my Park Slope supermarket, but I scored it in a nearby bodega. I ordered rendered duck fat online, and picked up suet from the butcher, who charged me a token dollar and told me he usually threw it away. Then I baked and baked. The whole house took on a rich pastry scent with undertones of roasted meat and butter, tinged with ginger, nutmeg, thyme and honeyed apples from the fillings. Not wanting to give up the flavor of butter entirely, I tested all the recipes using half butter, half other animal fat, and also at a ratio of 70 percent butter to 30 percent other fat. I also made a few crusts using all high-fat, European-style butter. The crusts were spectacular, each in its own way. The high-fat butter produced a crust that was markedly flakier, more tender and puff-pastry-like than those made with regular butter. It also shrank a bit less when I pre-baked it, and had an irresistible, browned butter flavor. This was the perfect crust for anyone not inclined to include meat products in a dessert. But overall, the favorites were the crusts using 70 percent butter and 30 percent animal fat. Any more animal fat pushed the meatiness factor too far onto the savory side of the pie spectrum, making these better for quiches than for fruit and custard fillings. Of the three animals, pig, cow and duck, the duck fat crust had the lightest flavor and, texturally, struck the best a balance between crisp and flaky. The pie crust revelation, however, was the suet pastry. As easy to work with as the shortening crust, it retained its shape perfectly in the oven, baking up crisp yet marvelously tender and flaky. It was nearly as delectable as the leaf-lard crust, tasting rich and slightly meaty, though not identifiably beefy. Suet is easy to find (most butchers can get it for you) and inexpensive. One caveat: suet is sold unrendered, but, as I discovered by way of my own laziness, you do not need to render it. Simply cut out the pinkish bits, finely dice or grate the chilled white fat, and toss it in with the butter. More refined bakers might blanch at the idea; if youre one of them, go ahead and render to your hearts content. Still, the leaf lard crust was as gorgeous as I remembered. Puffing up in the oven, and crumbling deliciously when you cut it, it took the crown. That very mild hint of bacon was happily still there. Not so with the processed lard pastry, which had an off flavor veering toward barnyard. Now, after my brief moment of pastry satisfaction, Ill move onto the next obsessive round of pie crust testing. Theres a whole roster of fats Ive yet neglected goose fat, marrow, foie gras fat, browned butter, truffle butter ... and if anyone out there has a source for bear fat, Ill try that too. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/dining/15crus.html

I'm sure the hydrogenated stuff will work just fine, but I don't know which is worse for you nutritionally--hydrogenated animal fat or hydrogenated vegetable oil. They're both way down on the 'good' list, and an argument over the benefits of each would be about as insightful as which is better for you, Winstons or Camels :) Fats are hydrogenated to eliminate any carbon-carbon double bonds. (A C=C bond as opposed to a simple C-C bond.) Oils with only one C=C bond are called monoenoic, or monounsaturated; the oils in olive oil are like this. Oils with more than one C=C bond are polyunsaturated, like safflower oil. They hydrogenate the fats to increase the shelf life; fats go rancid at least in part because the C=C bonds break down and oxidize. However, during the hydrogenation process trans fats are created, and those are bad actors associated with heart disease. I personally would go with shortening simply because it's probably been sitting on the shelf for a shorter period than that lard. Unless you shop at a store that serves an ethnic population that uses a lot of lard in its cooking, you may be purchasing some old stock.

My favorite pie crust recipe doesn't call for lard but I see no reason why you couldn't replace lard for the shortening. I used to make lard pie crust most of the time but realized one day that while I liked it for savory pies I really like butter based crusts better for dessert pies. Foolproof Pie Dough Cook's Illustrated Vodka is essential to the texture of the crust and imparts no flavordo not substitute. This dough will be moister and more supple than most standard pie doughs and will require more flour to roll out (up to 1/4 cup). INGREDIENTS--For one 9-inch Single-Crust Pie 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (6 1/4 ounces) 1/2 teaspoon table salt 1 tablespoon sugar 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (3/4 stick), cut into 1/4-inch slices 1/4 cup chilled solid vegetable shortening , cut into 2 pieces 2 tablespoons vodka , cold 2 tablespoons cold water 1. Process 3/4 cups flour, salt, and sugar together in food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogeneous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 10 seconds (dough will resemble cottage cheese curds with some very small pieces of butter remaining, but there should be no uncoated flour). Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining 1/2 cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl. 2. Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Flatten dough into 4-inch disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days. 3. Adjust oven rack to lowest position, place rimmed baking sheet on oven rack, and heat oven to 425 degrees. Remove dough from refrigerator and roll out on generously floured (up to ¼ cup) work surface to 12-inch circle about 1/8 inch thick. Roll dough loosely around rolling pin and unroll into pie plate, leaving at least 1-inch overhang on each side. Working around circumference, ease dough into plate by gently lifting edge of dough with one hand while pressing into plate bottom with other hand. Leave overhanging dough in place; refrigerate until dough is firm, about 30 minutes. 4. Trim overhang to ½ inch beyond lip of pie plate. Fold overhang under itself; folded edge should be flush with edge of pie plate. Flute dough or press the tines of a fork against dough to flatten it against rim of pie plate. Refrigerate dough-lined plate until firm, about 15 minutes. 5. Remove pie pan from refrigerator, line crust with foil, and fill with pie weights or pennies. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil and weights, rotate plate, and bake for 5 to 10 minutes additional minutes until crust is golden brown and crisp. Note: I've doubled this recipe for two crust pies, just rolled, filled and put the top crust on, it's wonderful. Nancy