Heavy cream and butter substitute

[Powderdog]

I ran accross a recipe that sounds pretty good but it calls for heavy cream and butter in the meat sauce. Can anyone suggest a substitute like maybe non-fat yogurt or something?

[Mezzaluna]

Welcome to Chef Talk, Powderdog. I suggest you post the recipe, as it'll be difficult to figure out how to balance the ingredients without it. Please include the instructions for it as well.

That said, sometimes there's no substitute for full-fat ingredients except maybe portion control!

[Suzanne]

No.

Substituting nonfat yogurt will give you a completely different dish, with a very different flavor. And you'll have to change the preparation, and add cornstarch to the yogurt so it doesn't break.

Make the dish as is and only use a tiny bit of sauce.

[Blueicus]

If it's something like a bolognese you should be able to use 3.2% milk, although to be perfectly honest I wouldn't go anywhere under that, or use a bechamel instead (although it won't be the same as a cream reduction). Of course, it all depends on the recipe as Mezzaluna says.

[Powderdog]

I copied and pasted it so it's a little hard to read but here it is:

Roast pork with fennel and red onion
INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup fresh sage
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons freshly ground cumin seed
1 (3 pound) boneless pork loin roast - trimmed, rolled, and tied
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 bulbs fennel, trimmed, tops reserved
1 1/2 cups orange juice
4 red onions with peel, halved
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
salt to taste


DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
Melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1/2 cup sage. Cook and stir until leaves are slightly crisp, about 1 minute. Remove leaves with a slotted spoon, and drain on paper towels. Cool, wrap in paper towels, and seal in a plastic bag. Set aside. Reserve the butter.
Mix the pepper and cumin in a small bowl. Rinse roast and pat dry; rub evenly with the pepper and cumin. Tuck remaining 1/2 cup sage leaves under the strings on the smooth (fattiest) side of the roast. Set the pork, herb side up, on a rack in a roasting pan.
Spread olive oil in the bottom of a medium baking dish. Thickly slice fennel and place in the dish. Toss to coat with the olive oil, and drizzle with 3/4 cup orange juice. Place onions in the dish cut side down.
Place roast on the center rack in the preheated oven. Place fennel and onions on lower rack. Bake the pork and vegetables 1 hour, or until pork reaches a minimum internal temperature of 160 degrees F (72 degrees C) and vegetables are tender. Turn fennel once during bake time. Reserving drippings, transfer meat to a platter and keep warm; let stand at least 10 minutes. Keep the vegetables warm in the baking dish.
Place the roasting pan with reserved drippings over high heat on the stove top, and mix in the reserved butter from Step 1, the remaining 3/4 cup orange juice, stock, and vinegar. Bring to a boil, and stir to scrape up any browned bits in the pan. Cook, stirring often, 10 minutes, or until reduced by about 1/2.
Arrange onions and fennel around the pork. Garnish with fennel tops, sprinkle with the fried sage leaves, and season with salt to serve.

[shel]

2 Tbs of butter for such a recipe isn't much, so unless you have a health reason for not using butter, or for some reason you realy don't like butter, I'd not be concerned about it. I don't see any heavy cream in this recipe ...

shel

[Blueicus]

Agreed, there's a minute amount of butter (proportionally) to the entire roast. If you are really that afraid (or that banned) of using butter simply substitute it for more of the oil, which it seems to be purpose of anyways... melted butter doesn't emulsify very well in that manner in any case. If you are simply worried about the fat content, I wouldn't use yogurt in that manner, it would break and make a curdled sauce and the butter can simply be omitted altogether and replaced with a sprinkle of minced sage. As Shel asked, where's the CREAM?

[phatch]

I wouldn't hassle over that amount of butter either and solutions are provided above.

What I would change is how to handle the orange juice. Onions will not get any more tender than they already are once they're exposed to something more acidic than they are. So those onions in the OJ aren't going to be getting tender during cooking. Use some water in the bottom of the pan with zest of an orange.

Then reduce the OJ at the stove and combine it with the drippings & water, balsamic and butter.

[Powderdog]

Originally Posted by phatch

I wouldn't hassle over that amount of butter either and solutions are provided above.

What I would change is how to handle the orange juice. Onions will not get any more tender than they already are once they're exposed to something more acidic than they are. So those onions in the OJ aren't going to be getting tender during cooking. Use some water in the bottom of the pan with zest of an orange.

Then reduce the OJ at the stove and combine it with the drippings & water, balsamic and butter.

Well, lucky me! I benefited by learning a few things from the responses above even though I provided the wrong recipe! Well I might as well provide the right one; maybe I'll learn more. Here it is:

Pork Roast with porcini and fennel (the fennel is in the herbs de provence)
INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup herbes de Provence
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 pounds pork tenderloin
• 1/2 cup dried porcini mushrooms
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup cognac
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 3 shallot, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
• 2 tablespoons honey
• coarse salt and ground black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large measuring cup, mix together olive oil, herbes de Provence, and garlic. Place tenderloin in a large, rectangular baking pan. Pour olive oil mixture over meat, and turn to coat. Cover, and refrigerate for 3 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Soak mushrooms in boiling hot water for 10 minutes to rehydrate.
3. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Remove meat from marinade, and discard any remaining marinade. Place meat in hot pan, and brown evenly. Return meat to baking dish.
4. Cook tenderloin in preheated oven about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the meat is 150 degrees F (65 degrees C). Remove from oven, and allow it to rest for 5 minutes before slicing.
5. Meanwhile, combine the water in which the mushrooms were soaked, cognac, lemon juice, and shallots in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until liquid is almost gone. Pour in the cream. Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to medium-low. Chop mushrooms, and stir into the sauce. Continue cooking until the sauce thickens. Stir in the butter and honey. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve over sliced tenderloin.

[Jeffaliscous]

hey, sounds like a tasty recipe.

At the restaurant i work at, we make many sauces that call for a lot of cream and butter, which can both break if they sit in a steam well for too long. We use a product called Culinary Cream. Its a more stable substitute for cream or butter. You can also freeze your food and it will come right back to the same consistency upon reheating.

now, i havent looked at the nutrition info on the container, so please dont kill me if it has more fat then cream. i will check as soon as i get to work tmrw and let you know.

but, regardless of fat content, Culinary Cream is a decent substitute for Cream or Butter.

Hope that helps

[oldschool1982]

Originally Posted by Suzanne

No. ....................

Simply sums up my thoughts exactly.

[madchef]

Why wouldn't you want to use butter or cream? Anything else tastes like crap and the fact that cooks want to use something different is insane. Besides, good food is to be spent enjoying not counting calories and grams of fat.

[Powderdog]

Originally Posted by madchef

Why wouldn't you want to use butter or cream? Anything else tastes like crap and the fact that cooks want to use something different is insane. Besides, good food is to be spent enjoying not counting calories and grams of fat.

Betcha I'll out-live you by 20 years and they'll be quality years. I'm 69 now, my blood pressure is 118 over 80, I weigh 160 lb., can run all day at 5000 ft. elevation and I don't remember what my cholesterol is but I do remember that my doctor said it was excellent. One more thing: I can drink a whole bottle of wine and go out and out-ski anybody on the mountain (almost).

[kuan]

Let's modify the technique. Make it a mushroom jus.

Brown the pork on all sides in a roasting pan and roast until done. Remove roast from pan and allow to rest. Meanwhile, on a stovetop, deglaze the pan with the cognac. Allow the alcohol to burn off. Then add the mushroom jus and chopped mushrooms. Bring to a simmer. Taste for seasoning. If necessary, adjust with salt and pepper.

Thicken with cornstarch or arrowroot until jus comes together and just coats the back of a spoon.

You think you can outski me bud? Come race the Birkebeiner with me this February.

[shel]

Originally Posted by Powderdog

Betcha I'll out-live you by 20 years and they'll be quality years.

A little butter or heavy cream every now and then, especially in the quantities you'd be eating in a recipe such as yours, really won't hurt you unless you have a medical condition that precludes your eating such things.

That said, I'd be the last person to suggest thatn it's "insane" to want to cut back on calories and fat intake. Nonetheless, some substitutes for these items may also cause problems, albeit different problems.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, I too try to limit my fat intake, often cutting back on, or eliminating, oil in some recipes, or using fats other than butter.

I'll have to agree with a number of posters here that by eliminating these ingredients, and finding substitutions, you may end up changing the taste and texture of the recipe enough that you might want to consider making something else. I don't know enough about making substitutions to suggest what else you should use. I rarely use heavy cream, and butter is used sparingly here. If I want butter or cream, I try to enjoy it in moderation. That's what works for me ... can't speak for you or to your situation.

shel