One morning, not too long ago, I was getting ready to cook some fried eggs. I went to the fridge, got out the tub of margarine and scooped out a big blob and plopped it into the frying pan. After about a minute or so, I noticed most of the "margarine" had evaporated. Wha?
Since oil does not readily evaporate, I had to figure something was up. Sure enough, a look at the margarine lid provided the answer. Toward the edge of the lid was printed: "39% Vegetable Oil".
W........T........F? The next time I was at the grocery store, I checked the other margarine tub lids and found vegetable oil percentages of anywhere from 39 percent to 53 percent. I also noted that stick margarine is generally 80% vegetable oil and costs the same or much less than the tub margarine per ounce. Bring a calculator with you when shopping.
Also, the wife does a lot of baking and was not satisfied with the results of using tub margarine and always uses stick margarine for baking. Since she never articulated a reason for the difference in results, I just assumed it was a quirk of hers. Not until I noticed the rapidly evaporating margarine did I realize there was a tangible reason for the different results.
This royally pisses me off, not just because money is really tight right now, but because I generally consider myself to be a fairly savvy shopper and can't stand it when I find out I got ripped off. Tub margarine IS a rip-off, major league. For the best value for the money buy generic stick margarine, but be sure to always check the vegetable oil content.
When you consider you can buy one pound packages of stick margarine, that is 80% vegetable oil, for as low as a dollar, then you can appreciate the screwing you are getting when you pay over two dollars a pound for "premium" tub margarine that is only around 50% vegetable oil.
Shopper beware...............YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!
As an aside, we generally use real unsalted butter, but if you must use margarine, buy the one with the highest vegetable oil content.
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