The Best Vegetable Oil Substitute For Brownies, According To An Expert

Whether the treat is made from scratch or comes from a box, brownies usually depend on some sort of oil to pull all of the ingredients together. Many recipes and boxed varieties of brownies call for vegetable oil, partially because it's affordable and already in most home kitchens. Like most recipes, which are essentially a guideline, you can easily make adjustments to enhance the flavor or to replace something you don't have. When it comes to substituting vegetable oil in brownies, there's one ideal option, according to Jessie Sheehan, a baker, recipe developer, and author behind the cookbook "Snackable Bakes."

"If your brownie recipe calls for vegetable oil, as many boxed brownies do, you can substitute melted butter for a richer, more flavorful final product," she reveals. What makes this even easier is that substituting vegetable oil with butter is a simple 1:1 ratio, making it easy to follow Sheehan's suggestion. It's best to use unsalted butter for your upgraded brownies because it will allow you to have total control of the flavor of the baked good. One tip when cooking with butter is to melt it in the microwave for this ingredient swap.

Substituting the vegetable oil for melted butter is rather painless in pretty much any type of recipe. While it's typically an even swap, check your box or recipe just in case it gives a different measurement for the alternate ingredient. Melt the butter and keep it hot so that it doesn't solidify before it goes into the batter and combines with the other ingredients easier. Follow the recipe for exactly when to add it, though it's likely that you will be instructed to add the butter to the eggs and other wet ingredients before you stir in the dry ingredients.

Since you are already using butter, another way to step it up is to use brown butter, which will enhance the flavor and pass it onto the batch of brownies. Try it with our ultimate fudgy brownies recipe, which uses brown butter by default. Another option that uses butter instead of vegetable oil is our mocha brownies recipe. Should you not want to use butter, swap the vegetable oil in the brownies with avocado oil, canola oil, olive oil, or even margarine.