Butter too pricey? Experts suggest these alternatives

First, it was eggs. Then, it was olive oil. Now, it’s butter.

Last week, Stats NZ said butter prices had climbed 60 percent in 12 months. That’s presented a dilemma for everyone from pastry chefs to home cooks who rely on it to bring distinctive flavour, texture and function to all kinds of culinary creations.

“Well, to be honest, it's been hard for a long time and it's only getting harder and harder,” says Suzannah Bath, an Auckland-based pastry chef.

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Turning to made-for-vegan options, such as olive oil spread Olivani, isn’t easy either because they are often just as expensive, she says.

But that doesn’t mean Bath and other chefs don’t have some tricks up their sleeves to blunt the financial hit of baking and cooking with butter.

Replacing butter in baking is difficult because baking is a science. All the ingredients react differently when combined with other ingredients, and when they are heated and cooled.

“In cakes, [butter] adds moisture and flavour but also in pastry, it adds moisture and flavour, but it also binds everything together and helps create the texture that we're after,” says Maxine Scheckter, a Wellington-based pastry chef who runs the Sugar Flour Pastry School.

Using oil is tricky, because while it is adding fat it is also adding liquid and so putting the recipe out of balance, she says.

Many of the recipes in her recent cookbook, Patisserie Made Simple, use a mix of oil and butter. Her preferred oils are canola and sunflower because they are low cost and light on flavour, unlike expensive and intensely flavoured olive oil.

Bath has found some success in swapping butter for rice bran oil. If the recipe calls for 100 grams of butter, then she recommends using 100 grams of rice bran oil instead.

“It works out the same but sometimes I have to play around with the recipe and adjust a bit,” says Bath.

Julie Clark, chef, baker and owner of Wellington restaurant Floriditas, points to cake recipes that often come from Italy that traditionally use oil. Experimenting with recipes for butter-free pastry is another story.

“I’ve been working on an oil-based pastry rather than a butter-based pastry and it’s erratic. Sometimes it turns out really well and other times not.”

Besides adding flavour, the purpose of butter in a sandwich is to create "a fat layer” stopping any juice fillings, such as tomato, from making the bread soggy, says Clark.

Mayonnaise, avocado and even mustard can fill this role.

“It depends on what the sandwich is,” says Clark.

I shared with Clark that I had used coconut oil on toast with jam and the results were delicious. That got her thinking about what savoury fillings might work with coconut oil instead of butter.

“But think about coconut oil with cucumber and a little bit of chilli and you’re taking it in a slightly Asian bend, but the oil there is still creating the barrier from making the bread soggy.”

Avoiding the cost of butter is easier when it comes to cooking dinner, unless you're keen on butter-laden French cuisine.

“Nowadays, a lot of the food that we eat is a lot lighter and a lot more Asian-inspired so it's not such a big deal,” says Clark.

“Butter is really rich and any butter sauce is, I mean, while it's delicious, it's still really rich, and it needs to be really well balanced.”

Scheckter, in the name of health rather than financial savings, has switched from pan-frying steak and fish with butter to just using oil. It works, but it isn't the same experience, she says.

“I have French training, so you cook whatever you're cooking and then you baste it in butter, and it makes it taste incredible.”