Is it okay to just replace shortening in a recipe with Butter?

Did you mean to ask if you could replace margarine with butter? If so, yes, by all means, you must. For reasons you obviously already understand well. If you did mean shortening, then wssmom has great advice for you. Butter will give you a very tender, flavorful pie crust. Lard, and here I'm referring to leaf lard, on the other hand, which contains 0% water, as does shortening, will give you a perfectly flaky crust. Decide which is more important to you and use it. Me, I'm a butter crust person because of the flavor. That said, I hope I'm not touching off a butter and lard fight, virtually speaking.

Thanks Ladies, I think all Margarine is beyond gross, the worst stuff ever, I grew up on REAL butter and that's the only thing i use to cook with. I am not familiar with Shortening, but i have heard of people using pork lard-fat in biscuits as well. Do you think if i had 100% Pork fat I could yield the same results as shortening as far as high rising fluffy biscuits?

Most recipes you can reasonably substitute butter for shortening. Keep in mind that shortening is 100 percent fat, while butter is normally about 82 percent fat and 18 percent water. In cookies, swapping butter for shortening means they'll spread out more and get darker more quickly and biscuits most likely won't rise as high. As far as pie crusts go, I would use a recipe that calls for butter to begin with rather than making the substitution. Also, have you thought about using coconut oil instead?

I always use butter (the real stuff, just say no to parkay!) in my cookies and pie crusts. I do specifically keep shortening for biscuits.