Vegetable Shortening
15 recipes found

Flour Tortillas
Homemade flour tortillas give every single store-bought one a run for its money and will elevate any burrito or quesadilla you make. The process is somewhat laborious, and it can be challenging to get them to be perfectly round, but perfection is not necessary, as you are going to roll or fold them anyway and your shapes will improve as you practice. This recipe uses vegetable shortening, which makes the tortillas accessible to vegetarians and non vegetarians alike. Taking a cue from the El Paso and Ciudad Juárez region, these tortillas de harina fronterizas are made with hot water and baking powder and the dough rests twice, the second time with the portioned dough nicely rubbed in fat. Follow these simple steps, give the dough a chance to rest and make sure the tortilla is fully cooked: When done on the outside, brown freckles appear on both sides, and it’ll be cooked through on the inside when it puffs. The results will be worth your while, as the tortillas will be soft and pillowy. Tuck any leftovers into a sealed container and enjoy the fruits of your labor for days.

Individual Pies With Wild Mushrooms

Tamales de Chile Rojo (Red Chile Tamales With Meat)
Tamales are often served with complementing salsas and soups, but Claudia Serrato serves her exquisite tamales de chile rojo — made with freshly ground nixtamalized blue corn and filled with tender, braised bison — plain, exactly as they are, with nothing else on the plate. The tamal is so deeply flavored, so perfumed with corn and chiles, that it doesn’t need a thing to hold your attention. Eat these the day you steam them, when they’re still piping with steam from the tamalera, and the next day, fry leftover unwrapped tamales in a hot pan for a perfect holiday breakfast.

Gingerbread Cookies
These traditional cookies came to The Times by way of Jennifer Steinhauer in an article about her grandmother's beloved Christmas cookie recipes. Isabelle Steinhauer would bake between “15 and 20 varieties each season: cream cheese wreaths shot from a cookie press; papery wafers carefully dipped in colored sugar; elaborate cutout cookies of nursery rhyme characters, their eyes fashioned from metallic dragées that the F.D.A. has written off as inedible; all manner of confections with nuts.” There's nothing fancy about these gingerbread cookies, but they are tender, gently spiced (feel free to add more to taste) and completely wonderful with a glass of cold milk. If you don't like using shortening, some readers have had good luck using half solid coconut oil and half softened butter instead.

Chocolate Glaze

Jalapeno Beer Biscuits

Chocolate Sugar Cookies
These are almost brownie-like in flavor, and remain slightly softer than many traditional sugar cookies. The recipe was developed by Georganne Bell, a professional cookie-decorating teacher in Salt Lake City who doesn’t like traditional vanilla sugar cookies. Unlike many sugar cookies, these don’t need to chill, and can be rolled out immediately after they are mixed. Avoid the temptation to add more flour (unless the dough is really sticky), or to use too much flour while rolling and cutting them, or the cookies will be dry. They don’t spread in the oven, so you can bake them close together. They are sturdy enough to decorate wildly with colored royal icing, but also taste good with just buttercream or a simple glaze of powdered sugar and water flavored with a little lemon juice or vanilla.

Pastry

George Ryan's Pecan Diamonds

Biscuits
What is more traditionally Southern than fluffy biscuits bathed in butter? These are sinful with dinner, terrific toasted and slathered with butter and marmalade the next morning.

Jean Halberstam's Deep-Fried Peaches
Jean Halberstam, who was married to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam until his death in 2007, is a well-known, accomplished cook. To make this dessert for a 2005 dinner party at their home on Nantucket, she plunged skinless peach halves into a batter, then sizzled them in a bath of boiling Crisco — yes, Crisco; “Nothing else makes them as crisp,” she said — until lightly browned, and rolled them in sugar. Her dinner guests could not believe how good these were.

Cornmeal waffles

Lattice Pastry

Middlebury Pie Crust
