Let’s face it. When given a choice to use oil versus butter in baking or cooking, the latter always wins hands down due to its richness and the added flavor it imparts to your dish. There are times however when butter is not the right ingredient to use for a dish. What do you do when you want to use butter but it is not right for a recipe? What do you use instead? When it is not okay to use butter?
Here are some tips and tricks that help you determine when butter should not be used for a recipe:
When searing meats – since searing requires high heat, and butter has a low burning point, you will need to use oil for this and not butter. If you check procedures that outline the cooking of steaks or other types of meat, you will notice that butter is actually added AFTER the meat is seared and added as a flavoring and not as the substance used to brown or cook it. It is also ideal to note that when you sear meats, particularly thick steaks, you should look for an oil that has a high burning point, so olive oil is not ideal here as well.
When sautéing vegetables – like when you sear meat, sautéing vegetables should be done with oil. Here, you can use olive oil. Butter should not be used for this but should only be added later to add more flavor to your veggies. Sautéing vegetables is also considered better than boiling or steaming since this helps seal in the flavors much like it does meat. Add the butter at the end of the process to add richness and flavor and to prevent the burning of the butter.
When roasting – another cooking method that does not work well with butter is roasting. While it is advisable that you add butter between the skin and meat of poultry, rubbing butter on top of veggies or meats before roasting is not a good idea. As usual, the reason is because of the low burning point of butter. Putting it under the skin of poultry is recommended because it is not exposed directly to heat but only exposed to secondary heat (from the chicken meat).
When cooking Asian food – have you ever seen an Asian recipe that mentions butter in it? Most if not all Asian food are cooked with oils like coconut and vegetable oil, and butter is never used. Asian food gets its flavor from the oils that are used and butter is not an Asian flavor. Use oils to flavor Asian food, like sesame oil and other similar Asian oils, the moment you remove the food from the heat.
For salad dressings – another place that butter is not used is in salad dressings. Have you seen dressings that use butter or melted butter in it? Oils are used for creating dressings because these do not break when mixed with acids. Use flavorful or aromatic oils for dressings, such as olive oil and avocado oil.