Alfredo sauce, or white sauce, is a popular sauce used for pasta dishes. However, it can also be used for pizzas, chicken bakes, casserole, lasagna, dressings, marinades, and also in vegetable roasts. It is a highly versatile sauce and is a great alternative to red sauce.
To make alfredo sauce, one of the key components is butter. However, maybe you are vegan, or just out of butter, there are some alternatives you can use to substitute butter in alfredo sauce. Sunflower oil, olive oil, ghee, shortening, or any vegan butter will work wonderfully and you will still get that creamy, delicious alfredo sauce that you were hoping for.
Sunflower oil is a popular replacement for butter in white sauce. This is because the sunflower oil will still give you that oily texture, but it won’t change the flavor because sunflower oil is a very flavorless oil. Sunflower oil and corn oil can often be used to replace one another as well. You can use the same amount of sunflower oil as the recipe calls for butter.
2. Olive Oil
Olive oil is another good oil you can use to replace alfredo sauce, though there are some stipulations. Oil does not emulsify as well as butter does in recipes, this means whatever you are cooking won’t be as blended as it would be if you used butter. Your recipe will be slightly more oily than you are expecting. The other thing to think about when using olive oil is that it does have a flavor, so your final product may taste slightly like olive oil. Despite these key notes, olive oil is an extremely popular butter substitute because it’s a very common household item and it still does the job that butter would be doing when making alfredo sauce. Use the same amount of olive oil as you would butter.
If you are not familiar with ghee, it is clarified butter, which means the milk particles have been removed from the final product. Ghee is basically just pure fat and can be heated to very hot temperatures without burning. Ghee is one of the best substitutes for butter in alfredo sauce because it holds the same flavor and will blend with everything else perfectly. Use an extra tablespoon of ghee when replacing butter as it has a lower water content.
4. Shortening
Shortening is basically just fat at room temperature. It’s more commonly used for baking, however, will work just fine as a butter substitute. Shortening may be slightly thicker than butter as it doesn’t melt down the way butter does. Use slightly more shortening than butter when making alfredo sauce.
5. Vegan Butter
There are many popular vegan butters on the market that are made to do the same exact thing that butter does, so there shouldn’t be a problem when using it to replace butter in alfredo sauce.
Not heaving butter for alfredo sauce may seem like a nightmare, but there is no need to worry! There are plenty of other things you can use to create a smooth creamy alfredo sauce that tastes just as good as the real thing.
