Woman refuses to participate in boyfriend's 'unsanitary' family soup tradition.
When this woman is freaked out by her boyfriend's mom's soup, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for not wanting to continue BF's family soup stock tradition?'
Sorry for such a silly story but the BF (25m) and I (24f) decided this is a case for some Reddit judgement. I'll write from my perspective, although we both decided to post this here.
So my BF loves to cook. His family loves to cook. I love to cook - everyone cooks! So of course we share a lot of recipes and enjoy food together.
Last weekend we were invited over to BF's parents place for a special occasion: His mother once a year cooks meat soup stock, in a huge pot over open fire in their garden.
It's a whole thing, she makes a LARGE batch, then reduces and freezes it to use over the year. I was interested of course, because it's food stuff. We wanted to go last year, but it was not possible due to the circumstances.
Now we go there and help with cutting veggies and have a great time. BF's mother tells me that the 'secret' of her meat broth stock is that at least one jar of last year's stock has to be used in making the new batch.
This apparently goes back some decades, her mother already did it*.* Meaning there is an uninterrupted chain of soup stock for like 40+ years. I was speechless, but like screaming internally but I didn't want to upset anyone or make a scene so I just nodded politely.
We had a good evening, and next day we went back home, BF's mom packed us a jar of this year's batch of meat broth stock, saying 'Now you can make a new branch with this'.
In the car I kinda started discussing this with my BF, saying that there is no way I'm going to continue this, it's unsafe! It's not safe to use 12 month old soup stock, frozen or not, let alone use it to contaminate freshly made soup, and then freeze it again.
I can't wrap my head around potential 40 years of soup stock in my jar. Pure luck nothing bad has happened so far.
BF made a few counter points: it's heavily dilluted. It was reheated and cooked for many hours before frozen again, his family did this for years and nothing bad ever happened, we have eaten stuff made with this stock before and nothing happened.
His sister does it too. No one got food poisoning in all these years. Long story short, we got into a fight over this. He wants me to keep that jar and use it to make our own batch of soup stock to keep the chain going.
I am disgusted by this and don't want to. He says it's a tradition, and his family shared a family recipe/food secret, so we should honour it.
He said if I am not going to do it, he would, but I told him I am not going to eat any food he makes with it, he called me a drama queen, and now we are both mad. Help, who is the asshole?
Let's find out.
cybryant34 writes:
NTA. You can choose to follow the tradition or not. When we take on a partner, we learn about their traditions. Usually most are followed.
But a lot of cooks use previously frozen stock. Would I do it - sure. Freezing / reheating might change / dilute the texture / flavor some, deteriorating the quality.
Sometimes it is better at knowing how the sausage was made.
salaqua writes:
YTA. Sorry. You're not trying to be mean but you're definitely uninformed. 12 months in a freezer might deteriorate quality but won't affect safety.
You've discarded & yucked a family tradition over personal sqeamishness based on your own ignorance. Loudly too.
Apologize sincerely to bf & thank his mother profusely for generously including you in a family tradition.
stoprobbers writes:
OP, I'm gonna go with YTA. You are a drama queen. You've already eaten food made with this stock, and on multiple occasions.
Whatever is bothering you is purely mental, because the actual food you ate caused no problems and no illness. It's all in your head.