Butter Substitutes: Simple Oil Alternatives for Everyday Recipes

Key Takeaways

• Many people prefer butter substitutes that lower their cholesterol intake and replace dairy in their food.
• Explore using the right oil to replace butter, including saturated vs. unsaturated options and refined vs. unrefined oils.
• Choose a butter alternative based on smoke point, consistency, flavor, and purpose to ensure delicious results.

What Can I Use Instead of Butter?

There are many reasons you may choose to skip out on butter in your daily cooking, including going dairy-free. Fortunately, there are many butter substitutes out there that provide the same texture, flavor, and consistency in your recipes as real butter!

If you’re looking for a butter replacement, Wildly Organic is here to help. Learn how to substitute oil for butter in cooking, baking, and much more!

Benefits of Butter Substitutes

Not all butter alternatives are made the same. However, when you find a healthy alternative to butter, you can expect to enjoy a number of benefits, including:

• Lower Cholesterol: Real butter has a ton of cholesterol that can throw off your LDL, build up in your arteries, and contribute to heart disease. With a healthy butter substitute, like our red palm oil butter, you can cut down on bad cholesterol.
• Allergen-Friendly: At Wildly Organic, we’ve made it our mission to try to accommodate every type of lifestyle, including vegan, keto, paleo, gluten-free, and more. With our vegan butter and organic cooking oils, you get an allergen-friendly solution.
• Added Vitamin A: Many people lack this essential vitamin in their diet. With a butter substitute that uses red palm oil and coconut oil, you’ll get 10% of your daily value of vitamin A in every serving.

How to Replace Butter With Oil

There are many places where it can be ideal to learn how to substitute oil for butter, especially in baking. Before you grab any old oil off the shelf, you’ll need a product with a consistency, melting point, and flavor similar to butter for your recipes. If you want to know what you can use instead of butter, we recommend exploring our dairy-free section for a variety of alternatives that look and taste just like butter!

There are many types of oil that may work for you, but you should take a close look at whether they’re refined or unrefined and whether they’re saturated or unsaturated.

Refined vs. Unrefined

How you substitute oil for butter depends on whether the oil you use is refined or unrefined. The purpose of refining oil is to make it more stable and remove some of the more potent flavors. With a refined oil as a butter substitute, you can expect it to have a higher smoke point and neutral flavor. Use refined oils when sautéing and roasting to prevent burning.

Typically, unrefined oils are used to dress a dish, just to add the finishing touch. Drizzle unrefined oil on salads, over toasted baguettes, or into creamy soups to enhance the flavor with unique richness, like the nutty flavor of walnut oil or the luxurious taste of olive oil.

Saturated vs. Unsaturated

How you replace butter with oil also depends on whether it’s saturated or unsaturated. Highly saturated oils are typically solid, such as coconut oil and palm oil. You might also consider cocoa butter if you’re recreating a butter-free version of a recipe that needs to set at room temperature.

Unsaturated oils will remain fluid, even at lower temperatures. The list of butter replacements here is very long and includes everything from canola oil and avocado oil to flaxseed oil and vegetable oil. This is an ideal substitute for butter in recipes that call for sautéing or frying.

Now that you have a butter substitute for every occasion, let’s look at some basic guidelines to help ensure your recipes come out tasting the same, even if they’re now dairy-free.

Oil Substitution By Recipe Type

As you can see from the explanation above, what you can use instead of butter depends on the purpose of your recipe. Here are a few ways to use the most common butter substitutes.

Cooking

Whether you’re doing some stovetop sautéing or sauce-making, you can use a 1:1 substitution with nearly any type of oil. You may want to choose an oil with a high smoke point. Avocado, sunflower, red palm, and peanut oil all have smoke points above 400℉.

Baking

For bread-like recipes, like rolls and cakes, you can use a 1:1 substitution ratio. However, if you prefer to keep the fat level the same, you can reduce the oil by up to 3 tablespoons per cup of butter.

Pie crusts and pastries differ when it comes to butter substitutes. For these recipes, we recommend a 1:1 substitution with saturated fats that stay solid, like shortening or coconut oil. You can use these same alternatives when making cookies as well.

No-Bake Substitutes

What can you use instead of butter in frosting, fudge, or caramel? Whipped oil is a good alternative when making frosting, while a 1:1 ratio of coconut oil is the right choice for fudge. Caramel also does better with a saturated butter substitute of similar solidity.

Final Thoughts

Butter is a tough ingredient to replace, but vegan butter and oil can be healthy alternatives that deliver great results! Now that you know how to replace butter with oil, you have all the information you need to experiment with your favorite recipes.

Looking for more butter substitutes? Shop our organic store for our Butter Alternative and cooking oils! Wondering how to substitute oil for butter in a specific recipe? Search our blog for healthy alternatives that use vegan products!