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Vegetable oil and butter are two types of shortening. All fats and oils are shortening, and can be substituted for each other, but this will affect the flavour and texture of the food, as some shortenings have stronger and different flavours, and also have different melting points.
It depends on the recipe. Shortening becomes solid at room temperature while vegetable oil does not. So vegetable oil may be substituted for melted shortening only in recipes that do not depend on shortening becoming solid for texture when cooled.
Butter or lard can be used instead of shortening in cakes. Some types of neutral-tasting oils, such as vegetable oil or canola oil, can be used in many cake recipes.
Substitutes for shortening are butter and margarine in sticks. Use the same amount as called for in your recipe. Keep in mind, plain shortening will NOT be as flavorful as butter or margarine. Do not use soft margarine in a tub as it contains too much water.
It really depends on what you are cooking/baking, but often you can substitute a cup of butter for the shortening. Don't use margarine though, because it has some water content and would possibly affect the results. You could also try half butter and half lard, which should work well, also.
Butter.A further response:Since margarine was developed as an inexpensive substitute for butter, butter is also a good substitute for margarine. Depending on exactly what recipe you are making, other possible substitutes might be lard or chicken fat (schmaltz), or a neutral tasting vegetable oil such as canola oil. Each type of fat will produce a slightly different baked product.
Margarine is shortening and can be used in place of butter or other shortenings in baking, though the flavour won't be the same. In many recipes some feel the best results in texture and flavour are obtained by using butter or half-and-half butter and lard.
You can use butter or margarine, but there will be a difference in the way your cookies turn out. Butter has a lower melting temperature than shortening. Therefore, cookies make with butter or margarine will be very flat, whereas cookies made with shortening will be thicker and more cakey.
Shortening or lard could be substituted without any major change in the recipe.
if a peanut butter recipe call for vegetable oil 1/3 cup and I only have 1/4 cup can I melt crisco shortening and add to the vegetable oil.
I always use butter. You may want to adjust the salt in the recipe if not using unsalted butter.
In many things you can use margarine, lard, or shortening instead of butter, or a combination of any of them. I actually use 1/3 butter, 1/3 shortening, and 1/3 lard for the fat in my homemade pie crust, which gives excellent results. Just keep in mind that margarine has a higher water content than butter, so depending on what you are baking, the results may be just a little different than with butter.