Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with margarine

The elusive vegan brown butter - can it be done?

faunafrailty — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:48:37 -0800

Can you brown dairy-free margarine for recipes that call for brown butter? How do you do it? I usually use Nucoa or Earth Balance margarine to veganize recipes. Has anyone had any luck browning this stuff? If so, how?

Here's an example of a recipe that I know I can veganize--except the pesky brown butter.

(Bonus question: Any hope of a vegan ghee or clarified butter? I've never thought so but maybe someone knows. For vegan cooks, do you just sub with margarine?)

¡Margarina! ¡Mantequilla!

Robert Angelo — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 17:22:23 -0800

I like the taste of butter. I grew up with margarine as the "healthier" substitute, then switched to various spreads, then back. What provides the healthiest butter or butter analog? I was just cooking some broccoli and I went to the fridge and chose between the butter and margarine to add my buttery taste.I happened to glance at the labels, and I saw that butter had 11 grams of fat per serving, but 0 trans fat. Butter also had 7 grams of saturated fat, fwiw. The margarine had 9 grams of fat, but 2.5 grams of trans fat and 3 grams of polyunsaturated fat. The balance in each case was monounsaturated.

So which is best? I know I prefer the butter, by taste and texture, and it seems like so many people and government regulators are freaking out about trans fats (but not sat fats). On the other hand, I always thought that the polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats were supposed to be better for you. So which is it?

FWIW, I grew up in the 1970s, when my Dad had high cholesterol and Parkay was the best thing going. Now that I'm his age, the information seems so much more complex. Help!

Why does margarine melt my popcorn?

sled — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 17:02:21 -0800

Whenever real butter is used for a topping on my popcorn it seems to work well, coats the popcorn, does not make it soggy. When I use margarine it seems to "melt" the popcorn, making it soggy. I am curious to hear some technical reasons why this might happen. I know the melting points are nominally similar, so I have crossed that out. My brainstorm starts with a higher specific heat, a different lipid bilayer, or some more complex organic interaction between the differing molecules?