What are the ingredients of shortening?

Many families have shortening in their kitchens. This is a kind of vegetable oil that plays a very important role in the process of making delicious food. Its most important function is shaping. It also has an emulsifying effect. Especially when making some pasta and pastries, shortening is almost indispensable. Everyone should pay attention to the health issues of eating shortening. The nutritional components of shortening are introduced in detail below.

Shortening Ingredients:

1. Shortening originally refers to a type of plastic solid fat used to shorten or soften baked goods. Today's shortening includes a broad product range, as newly developed fluid and powder shortenings and margarines with less than 20% water phase all have the functional properties imparted by plastic fats.

But generally speaking, shortening refers to refined animal or vegetable fats, hydrogenated oils or mixtures of the above fats, which are processed by rapid cooling and kneading or not, and are solid or fluid fat products with functional properties such as plasticity and emulsification. All fat products that give certain baked foods a glossy appearance and surface, and that are used for emulsification, layering and lubrication, are shortening. The main difference between shortening and margarine is that shortening does not contain a water phase and cannot be eaten directly. It is often used in baking, cheese making or frying food.

2. Shortening is a plastic fat. Its triglyceride composition contains a considerable amount of saturated acid esters. At room temperature, these saturated acid esters enclose liquid fat in the form of fine solid crystals to form a plastic state that can resist fine external stress. Butter and lard are natural plastic fats. They have been valued and widely used by people for a long time because they can block the combination of protein and starch and thus crisp or soften baked foods in the processing of pastry and baked foods. However, the limited resources cannot meet the ever-increasing consumer demand, which has motivated scientists to continuously seek to develop alternative oil products.

3. Shortening is divided into ordinary type, stable type and highly emulsified type according to its use in food processing. Its functional properties are mainly obtained through hydrogenation or esterification oil modification technology and processing. Today, the food industry has increasingly higher technical requirements for the functional properties of shortening. With the progress of hydrogenation and transesterification technology, scientists are making unremitting efforts to study shortening.

4. The newly developed shortening has flowing and powdered products, both of which have the same uses and properties as plastic products. Therefore, the scope of shortening is very broad, and it is difficult to give an exact definition. The definition of shortening varies in different countries and regions. The definition of shortening in the Japanese Agricultural and Forestry Standards (JAS) is: Shortening refers to refined animal and vegetable oils, hydrogenated oils or mixtures of the above oils, solid oils made by rapid cooling and kneading, or solid or fluid oil products produced without rapid cooling and kneading. Shortening has processing properties such as plasticity, shortening, and emulsification. Shortening is generally not suitable for direct consumption, but is used to process pastries, bread or fried foods, and requires good processing properties.