Quick food question

[thistlechaser]

I hate to ask this, because I'm afraid I'm right:

I decided to get soup for lunch (I'm tired of salads, so that seemed a good way of eating veggies). Deli had "garden vegetable soup", but still I asked if there was meat in it. They said no. However, when I got it home, I noticed the sides of the container had that icky orange grease on it.

As far as I know (which is admittedly less far than I could throw my computer), orange grease only comes from meat. That true or not? I ate a little, but since I was worried I might be right, I threw most of it out.

Any guesses?

(And a cheese and lettuce sandwich tastes surprisingly good! Got a half of one with the cup of soup.)

Comments

[simmysim.livejournal.com]

uhm ... melted cheese leaves orange grease, i know. but if someone's sticking melted cheese in your soup without explicit directions to do so, that might just be as bad. 0.o;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

First off, your LJ name amuses me muchly. :)

And yeah, I don't think there was any cheese in there. Just broth and an assortment of veggies.

[simmysim.livejournal.com]

:D! thankees!

well then ... looks like you'll have to kill them all. *shrugs*

[darkkitten1.livejournal.com]

Orange grease can happen in perfectly vegetarian soup, for example if you use oil of any kind as well as tomatoes, carrots etc. Take a look at Campbell's vegetarian vegetable canned stuff...

Most tasty soup has some kind of fat in it. However, restaurants etc. are notorious for not having a clue if premade soups have beef or chicken stock in them. Sometimes they'll let you read their big can, frozen package or whatever the soup comes in. If they sounded sure it was vegetarian though, it is probably OK.

I know exactly your dilemma; I've been a vegetarian since I was twelve. Cheese sandwiches will save your life in many food situations.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I feel a little less guilty now.

It was very tasty soup, yes. So the more I thought about that it might be meat fat in it, the worse I felt about finding it good-tasting.

...oh, bah. I'm trying to keep "guilt" out of my change, but sometimes I fail at that. :P

(Cute icon, too. I giggled at it!)

[darkkitten1.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked my flustered Sirius!

The guilt is hard to shake, but life is complicated and you just do what you can.

The chemical reason for orange vegetable grease is that the pigments in chilies, tomatoes, carrots and most other red/orange/yellow foods are carotenoids or related compounds and are fat-soluble. So they go into solution in the tiny drops of fat that float on top of the soup, rather than in the water-based soup itself. (This is why you can make pretty flavored/colored oil by soaking purple basil etc. in it). Doesn't take a lot of fat to make a soup tasty, but it can look like a lot when it's floating on top like that.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting! Thanks!

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

It might have had meat broth in it. However, I've found funky orange grease in things with a high tomato or capsicum content, and carrots have been known to do it as well (but very seldom). If it was a tomato based soup, either they've used a very fatty meat broth or a lot of vegetable oil (most likely soybean). If it was spicy as Hell (unlikely), it was just pigment from the chiles. You can ask if it's got any meat or chicken broth in it, but I suspect it was just tomato.

Being vegetarian in the real world is a pain, isn't it? :( **hugs** I've been vegan for more than six years now, and I'm still not entirely used to the odd looks and stupid questions. (The most memorable came from a waiter, who asked in the most disparaging tone he could, "Why??" I wanted him to be hit by a truck.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

It did have both tomatos and carrots in it, so I was hoping it might be from that, but I suspected meat broth over orange veggies. Le sigh. Next time I'll be more specific with my questions, I guess. (I already felt silly for asking if there was meat in it. I expected them to say something like "Lady, didn't ya read the sign? It's called garden vegetable soup!". Plus that the two people who worked there didn't speak more than ten words of English between them didn't help...

*hugs back!* Thanks for the wisdom!

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

I made a meatless tomato and carrot soup that came out orange and had orange grease/film on the top.

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

Actually, it came out red, but it did have an orange film.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

See, I knew I didn't know enough about this. Thanks for the info!

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

Isn't eating out fun!?

Fortuantly, in my area it is not that bad, probably because we do have a lot of hindus in the area. But the wrong restraunt, or travelling out of the area and wow, the change is amazing.

I was in South/Central IL a while back, and every where we went people seemed to think vegetarian meant no red meat (and they didn't have a clue what vegan was). That scene in procul his where they went to eat at a vegetarian restraunt was basically just a reverse of that tired experience of trying to find something edible out to eat. Every time I'd ask for something w/o meat they tried to offer me a lo-cal pork chiop dinner, then when i explained pork was meat, they suggest chicken... ugh.... once we establish chicken is out they recommend fish.... Do I even want to TRY explaining veganism at this point? GAH. Finally find a vegitable soup on the menu which they SWEAR up and down has no meat in it. When it comes out, it is beef stock with bits of beef floating in it. Yes it had veggies in it, but it wasn't vegetarian!

Problem is, when such things happen, I can't send it back, because they have to throw it away. And I feel throwing it away is more disrespectiful to the animal than eating it. So I either have to choke it down, or see if someone else at the table wants it, or have it wrapped up to give to my pets. =( Of course, then they don't understand why I'm so angry with them, even though I'm obviously eating the food (or taking it home). Sigh.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear god, story of my life right there. I'm vegan for allergy reasons - meat and milk trigger asthma attacks if I'm lucky, and eggs give me an allergy headache - so I can't just eat things, which annoys me. I've had waitstaff get offended that I had to send something back because it had, say, cheese on it when I'd already told them half a dozen times that any amount of milk is bad. Thankfully, we've got a fair-sized Vietnamese population around here, not to mention a generous handful from India and the Middle East, so if I stick to the ethnic areas I'm usually pretty well set.

*cringes at the thought of being served a pork chop* I know there was a time that I liked them and that a lot of people still do, but I can't even bear the thought of putting it in my mouth anymore. Meat. Ugh. Connective tissue. BLEAH!

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Arggh. I can't stand the people who pretty much define "vegetarian" as "a pork chop with the fat trimmed off" or "comprised of meat substances... but with veggies thrown in!". And you're right about the futility of explaining veganism- you could switch to Swahili and the comprehension rate would be about the same.

And your icon is darling!

[quasilemur.livejournal.com]

While possible, the meat broth thing is actually quite unlikely. A meat stock, however, something fairly different, is a fairly common ingredient in many soups. Stocks are often used as a replacement, either partial or total, for water, to give a sauce/soup/whatever more flavor while still being a neutral base.

However, as stated above, it's even more likely that the film was simply vegetable matter, oil, or a combination thereof. Completely normal, either way.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Bad me, I was using stock/broth interchangeably (don't hit me!). Yay! I'm now glad I asked this question, instead of worrying away quietly to myself. It's great to have so many food-smart friends!

[tersa.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to reiterate what other people say, but the "orange grease" could be "orange-colored fat", which vegetable oils can also be.

One thing they didn't mention as a possibility is that it could be butter which has picked up the coloration from either the tomatoes or the carrots. Vegetable oil will normally not solidify when cooled, but butter would, and they may saute vegetables, like onions, in butter before adding it to the soup.

So, yeah. Ask if it's vegetarian. And if you're getting the soup at a major chain, you can probably find the ingredient list online. Restaurants are getting more conscious about making sure to have the info available for vegetarians, vegans, and other groups (like some Hindi) who cannot eat certain food items, especially meat.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*Whew*, and thanks for the info!

And if you're getting the soup at a major chain, you can probably find the ingredient list online.

Yeah, I discovered that. It's handy! (This was a small place, The Bread Basket, on Wolfe, just south of Central. Tiny little deli in with a bunch of auto repair places.)