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

[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!