Crisco Just Got Some Serious Competition

There's a new baking staple for the holiday season on shelves now.

The upcoming holiday season is prime baking time for most home cooks. That means many people are dusting off their grandma’s old cookbooks to make their favorite holiday cookies, cakes, and pies. With many of Grandma’s old baking recipes comes one familiar ingredient: shortening.

Well, actually, most grandmas used lard, though, we’ve adapted the recipes from traditional animal fat to vegetable-based shortening over the years, but, we digress.

Typically, when you think of vegetable shortening, you probably think of Crisco because that was the first brand to introduce the product in 1911. Crisco is still the most popular vegetable shortening—sold in both regular and butter flavor varieties—used in baking in place of butter or lard.

However, as we’re entering Crisco’s most popular season, the brand is getting some serious competition.

Chosen Foods Launches New Avocado Oil Shortening

Chosen Foods, the makers of the popular avocado oil, are releasing a new shortening that’s the first “clean ingredient” version of the baking staple on the market. Chosen Foods Avocado Oil Shortening is made purely from avocado oil and is free from soybean oil, fully hydrogenated palm oil, palm oil, mono and diglycerides, TBHQ, and citric acid (antioxidants), which are used to make most commercial shortenings.

The new shortening only has one ingredient, “fractionated avocado oil,” which is created during the process of making avocado oil using the leftover avocado solids.

Just like traditional vegetable shortening, Chosen Foods’ new Avocado Oil Shortening has a “neutral flavor profile,” so you can add it to any recipe that calls for shortening—or butter or lard—without it impacting the flavor.  Chosen Foods says its Avocado Oil Shortening is ideal for baking, frosting, and frying—it might even be better than traditional vegetable shortening for frying since avocado oil has a higher smoke point.

The new Chosen Foods Avocado Oil Shortening is rolling out now, where it will be sold in a 16-ounce tub nationally at Target, as well as on Chosen Foods’ site.

This clean-ingredient swap just might be worth a try this holiday season—but maybe don't tell Grandma that you changed her recipe.