Jimbo wrote: Soup should not be crunchy.

Tonkatsu ramen wants to have a word

Also...crackers? Croutons? I used to eat my soup w/ a stupidly high ratio of crackers-to-liquid. Still soup. Milk? Also [technically] soup. If you heated it in the microwave and sipped it from a spoon and told folks you were eating soup, you wouldn't be tricking anyone....because there's no trick. You could add crackers to a bowl of hot milk and it's soup, why not? Yeah it's gross but so are a lot of soups. Grossness, soggyness, crunchiness, weirdness - none of that affects a soup's intrinsic "soup-ness." If it's liquid and it's food, it's still soup.

Surprised this is still even being questioned and that so many people are entrenched in cereal NOT being soup at this point when it clearly is a form of soup or technically soup even if you don't really think of it as being soup. It is. It's breakfast soup. In fact if you told a co-worker you had "breakfast soup" that morning, they might chuckle at you for being the office weirdo but they would know you were talking about cereal.

Again, soup is liquid food. It's the only consistent definition.

Garth wrote: Tue Nov 08, 2022 10:16 am Surprised this is still even being questioned and that so many people are entrenched in cereal NOT being soup at this point when it clearly is a form of soup or technically soup even if you don't really think of it as being soup.

Next time when I'm in a restaurant, if I ask "What kinds of soup do you have available?", and they say "Captain Crunch (with milk)", I will be FLOORED.

I will have a similar reaction if my friend is eating a bowl of cereal, we're trying to leave, and they say "Oh, please let me finish my SOUP."

You can say cereal is technically a soup, and there's no point in me disputing that any further, but calling it such is going to cause a lot of confusion in real-life conversation. It's not a sufficient descriptor for what it actually is.

Sure, but also none of that matters. Social conventions don't write definitions, only perceptions.

I, for one, will not participate in this sophistry. Cereal is not soup, any more than hot chocolate with marshmallows is soup.

You all are trying to misuse the definition of soup to give cereal a dignity it does not deserve.

“Ah, I see you are enjoying an elegant bouillabaisse, which you made over the course of hours using ingredients just harvested from the sea. And you, you are making your head cold less miserable with a bowl of your great-grandmother’s chicken soup. Well, I, too, enjoyed a bowl of soup just this morning, when I poured WalMart milk over a cup of Pumpkin Spice Bullshit Cheerios and I also like Steely Dan.”

Show us on this doll where the Cracklin' Oat Bran hurt you

It seems gazpacho is the outlier that confuses the issue, so I'll go with: Gazpacho is not soup, it is a smoothie - served in a bowl. Add vodka and a celery stick to your gazpacho and fuck-off with the soup appellation. Cold borscht is also bullshit food. It's just cold-ass cooked beets in water with a dab of smetana. Real borscht is a soup, made with beef stock and cabbage and other good soup things.

Thusly:

Soup: Must be broth-based. Could be vegetable, chicken, beef, or shrimp tails & dried anchovies & kombu. Could have dairy in the base, but not necessary. The ingredients must be cooked in the broth. Pureed soups are just bisques and have some body.

Porridge: Is grains that are cooked in liquid to rehydrate the grains and make them soft and edible, but not dry without any residual liquid: i.e.: cooked rice is not porridge, pilaf/plov is not porridge, polenta is not porridge. Oatmeal, farina, grits and congee are porridge.

Breakfast Cereal is a dry mixture of already cooked grains that are meant to be enjoyed with a dairy or dairy substitute base, but is not necessary. Breakfast cereal is not meant to be rehydrated (unless you're a weirdo who likes eating gooey mush).

Edit: Some folks have mentioned stews, which are not necessarily soups. To me, as soup has ingredients cooked in the broth, with the possible exception of aromatics. A stew is a braise which has ingredients being browned while dry or in fat, before liquid being added and cooking to soften the browned ingredients (usually tough cuts of meat).

ChudFusk wrote: Tue Nov 08, 2022 12:22 pm Show us on this doll where the Cracklin' Oat Bran hurt you

Here. In my heart.

(I like cereal fine.)

Geiginni wrote: Soup: Must be broth-based. Could be vegetable, chicken, beef, or shrimp tails & dried anchovies & kombu. Could have dairy in the base, but not necessary. The ingredients must be cooked in the broth. Pureed soups are just bisques and have some body.

Doesn't have to be cooked. Gazpacho might ALSO be technically a smoothie, but it's a soup. There's no shortage of uncooked, raw soups. And as far as the base or broth goes, milk is the base. They're called soups because they're liquid and food.

Also, cooking doesn't necessarily have to involve heating. The most accurate description for "cook" would be closer to "preparing food." A prep cook for example may never apply heat to any of the vegetables they cut up.

Cereal is soup.