Need Cooking Spray Alternative? Here Are 5 Best Options to Consider
Most people don’t buy regular cooking spray because of health and environmental reasons as well as money. Luckily, there are other options that one can use as non-stick cooking spray substitute. Moreover, cooking sprays are not very good for us and its safer for you to use other available alternatives.
Non-stick cooking sprays have been around from the 1960s and they became popular since they were great alternatives to cooking oil and high fat butter. The sprays are used to prevent food from sticking on to the pan while at the same time ensuring that you’re not consuming a lot of calories.
Unfortunately, majority of store bough cooking sprays comprise of more than just regular oil. Since the oil is thinned out using water, you’re likely to find other ingredients such as dimethyl silicone (anti-foaming agent), soy lecithin (an emulsifier) as well as food grade propellant which make it easy for the oil to come out of the can.
If you don’t want to come into contact with such ingredients, you can use other non-stick cooking spray substitutes instead. These alternatives can be used on everything from lubricating things like measuring cups so as to enable some sticky ingredients such as honey to come out with ease to greasing a pan meant to be used for baking a homemade cake.
Non Stick Cooking Spray Alternatives
The following are some of the best non-stick cooking spray substitutes, you can pick what is suitable for you.
-
1. Butter and Lard
Butter and lard are the best non-stick cooking spray substitutes. They are both soft enough to be spread onto any kind of baking pan and it can easily be done with fingers. Your hands also don’t have to become messy when using these products. You can decide to use either paper towel or parchment paper to help you do the greasing.
Note that both lard and butter have strong flavors than most of the neutral oils that are used to make cooking sprays. The flavor in butter will be a great addition to your baked goods, while lard is more suited for roasting vegetables and meats.
-
2. Regular Oil
Cooking spray is generally watered down, pressurized oil, so you can use generous amounts of your favorite high-temperature healthy cooking oil to substitute. Our favorite non-stick cooking spray substitute is olive oil, though you can as well use other neutral flavored oils such as avocado oil and sunflower oil. If you don’t want to end up using a lot of oil to cook, you can pour some onto a paper towel which you will then use to rub a very thin layer onto your pan.
-
3. Give Flour a Try
Have you ever come a cross any recipe that suggest that you dust the grease pan with flour instead? This is mostly because using flour is a great wat of preventing baked goods such as muffins and Bundt cakes from sticking onto the baking pan. You can create a flour mixture which is spreadable and will magically prevent food from sticking by blending equal parts of vegetable oil, all purpose flour and vegetable shortening. Make sure that you store the mixture in the refrigerator and then you can spread it on the pan with the help of a silicone basting brush.
-
4. Buy a Refillable Spray Bottle
If you’d still like to spray the oil instead of spreading it, you can make your own homemade non-stick cooking spray substitute. Get a spray bottle that is refillable – such as this one found on Amazon – and fill it with your preferred cooking oil. This would be a perfect non-stick cooking spray substitute for all kinds of recipes that require the store-bought ones. You can also use the bottle for your salads by lightly spritzing oil on them instead of using heavy dressings.
-
5. Bacon Fat
This non-stick cooking spray substitute is a little less versatile, unless you won’t mind your baked goods having a slight taste of bacon. Nevertheless, bacon fat can be a great alternative because as you know, we all love bacon!
