6 ms·

Microbiologist Investigates After Her Beef Soup Turned Blue in the Fridge

104 points by notamy 4y ago

lovich 4y ago
Was there garlic in the soup? Garlic can turn green or blue when cooking depending on the ingredients involved. I assume the bright blue photo in the article isn’t an actual picture of the soup in question.
- messe 4y ago
  There’s an actual picture in an embedded tweet further along the article.
- sp332 4y ago
  https://mobile.twitter.com/bielleogy/status/1630811835527213056 https://mobile.twitter.com/bielleogy/status/1630811835527213...
- dhosek 4y ago
  There was no garlic in the soup. There are links to the twitter thread although most of the interesting tweets are shown in the article as well.
- pimlottc 4y ago
  It really peeves me how often articles use unrelated stock photos for their hero image, often without even noting it.
e40 4y ago
The Hibiscus tea I use turns blue when I steep it at my mom's place, but not at mine. I have a very good water filter, she does not. First time it happened, I was quite startled. She had a filter at her place she never used, so we tried it. Yep, filtered water resulted in pinkish tea. What's in the water is unclear, but there was a lingering unease related to it.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  The water in your mom's place is probably a bit acidic if I had to guess, and the filter removes the ions
  - gweinberg 4y ago
    Shouldn't it turn red if it's acidic and blue if it's basic?
    - pflanze 4y ago
      Yes. Also, it is my understanding that calcium in water (which is a normal part due to the water taking up minerals in the ground) is making it slightly basic. I don't know enough about chemistry in this area, but I think the calcium in the water is mostly calcium carbonate, which definitely is basic[1]. So it's no surprise that water taken directly from the tap is making the tea blue, but after removing the calcium carbonate (maybe as part of a removal of any salts) that the tea remains red. I think this hints that an ion exchanger[2] is being used in the "very good water filter" e40 is using. But removing calcium from water (along with other potentially beneficial minerals) is a bad idea, because we need it for building our bones etc. Hopefully those using ion exchanger are still getting enough calcium from other sources. But it's long been said that ion exchangers should not be used to "filter" water. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_exchanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_exchanger PS. you can put some drops of lemon juice into your tea and it will shine red :) (and have a nicer taste)
- hoseja 4y ago
  That might be iron actually, somehow. I once cut a banana with a carbon steel machette and it turned blue.
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago
    If you pardon my intrusion, may I inquire why were you using a machete to cut a banana?
kazinator 4y ago
"Don't it make my brown eyes^H^H^H^Hsoup blue."
zabzonk 4y ago
> If it turns out that the pigment is caused by P. aeruginosa, they would have to stop working on the blue soup due to its infectious nature. microbiologists work with much more dangerous organisms than pseudomonas all the time. speaking as an ex microbiologist.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Not a migrobiologist, but I understand that labs are equipped with progressively more stringent procedures depending on the type of material they can handle. They may work in a very regular, run of the mill lab that is not equipped to deal with anything that is even remotely dangerous. And seeing they have only nitrile gloves for protection and everything lays on the table it looks like this is likely the case. (Not that I ever worked in a lab. My ideas of how lab safety works are based on The Andromeda Strain).
  - zabzonk 4y ago
    pseudomonas is a very common urinary tract infection, along with e.coli and proteus, none of which commonly cause deaths. it is not particularly dangerous. using common sense and basic aseptic technique will keep you safe. back when (early to late 70s) we did not use gloves at all, because they were uncomfortable - just washed our hands a lot. nobody ever died or got infected. before i joined, someone did die from the hepatitis virus. we were not a virology lab, but we did do immunology, which is where the blood that caused the death came from - we did use gloves when dealing with that. for the more dangerous organisms, such as mycobacterium tuberculosis, we used air extraction hoods.
    - kragen 4y ago
      i think pseudomonas still qualifies as bsl2 nowadays this is why we can't have nice things
      - zabzonk 4y ago
        ok, i looked that up. i really don't believe ppe does anything useful, i have never seen any double-blind tests that suggests it does. pseudomonas clings to the petri dish agar medium and will not get on your body unless you do something very silly. one way of diagnosing bacterial infections is by smell. for example, if you put your nose next to an agar plate where haemophilus influenzae is growing, you get a very characteristic smell. there are other smells. i have never heard of any microbiologist contracting an infection doing this. too much snowflake stuff here. the most scary thing that happened to me was not dealing with the bacteria, but the reagents and stains we used. i was making up some gram stain (basically iodine and NaOH in solution) when i added the water to the two solids - result steam explosion (because NaOH + H2O is exothermic) in my face. my thought was "shit, you have blinded yourself" but luckily there was an eye-wash bottle and a sink next to me, so my eyes survived. why i did this i have no idea, as i had been taught from the age of 15 to always add solids to water. anyway, so bugger bacteria - chemicals (and steam, electricity etc.) much more dangerous.
Maursault 4y ago
My stomach turned at "meat soup." What is that? Oh, you don't want to hear about that. They lined us up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib. All of us, you know, lined up lookin' at it. Magnificent meat, really! Beautifully marbled. Magnific. Next thing, they're throwin' the meat into these big cauldrons. All of it! Boiling it! I looked inside, man, it was turning grey.
- smcl 4y ago
  Soup with beef in it is relatively common in the two places I've lived - UK and Czech Republic. Couple of very common examples of "beef soup" from each: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oxtail-soup https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oxtail-soup https://www.daringgourmet.com/traditional-scotch-broth/ https://www.daringgourmet.com/traditional-scotch-broth/ https://www.angusfarm.cz/recepty/hovezi-vyvar-698/ https://www.angusfarm.cz/recepty/hovezi-vyvar-698/ http://www.pradobroty.cz/2019/03/gulasova-polevka.html http://www.pradobroty.cz/2019/03/gulasova-polevka.html I think what the saucier in your quote[0] was upset about was cooking good quality meat very badly, not the idea that meat generally could be used in soup :) [0] - for those who don't know, it's this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFvAaO9j8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFvAaO9j8M
- crazygringo 4y ago
  It's definitely an odd phrase. "Beef stew" is the normal way to say it. Is "beef soup" a common expression somewhere for the same thing, or is it something different? I don't know what your quote has to do with anything though. Beef stew is the perfect use for tough cuts, simmered for hours.
wazoox 4y ago
Once in 1991 I left some cooked rice in a pot in the kitchen. The next day, it was covered with a bright violet slime. I don't know what it was, but I still remember it vividly (as the colour was).
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Possibly b. cereus
  - Noumenon72 4y ago
    There's no reason to assume he's not being serious.
dvh 4y ago
Few years ago there was a case in my country where store bought ham/sausage glowed in the dark: https://youtu.be/WgsBF9jzDEw https://youtu.be/WgsBF9jzDEw
ihatepython 4y ago
It's probably due to climate change. Instead of Beef Soup, she should be eating Insect Soup. Most likely, it wouldn't have turned blue.

104 points by notamy 4y ago

Was there garlic in the soup? Garlic can turn green or blue when cooking depending on the ingredients involved. I assume the bright blue photo in the article isn’t an actual picture of the soup in question.

messe 4y ago
There’s an actual picture in an embedded tweet further along the article.
sp332 4y ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/bielleogy/status/1630811835527213056 https://mobile.twitter.com/bielleogy/status/1630811835527213...
dhosek 4y ago
There was no garlic in the soup. There are links to the twitter thread although most of the interesting tweets are shown in the article as well.
pimlottc 4y ago
It really peeves me how often articles use unrelated stock photos for their hero image, often without even noting it.

e40 4y ago

The Hibiscus tea I use turns blue when I steep it at my mom's place, but not at mine. I have a very good water filter, she does not. First time it happened, I was quite startled. She had a filter at her place she never used, so we tried it. Yep, filtered water resulted in pinkish tea. What's in the water is unclear, but there was a lingering unease related to it.

raverbashing 4y ago
The water in your mom's place is probably a bit acidic if I had to guess, and the filter removes the ions
- gweinberg 4y ago
  Shouldn't it turn red if it's acidic and blue if it's basic?
  - pflanze 4y ago
    Yes. Also, it is my understanding that calcium in water (which is a normal part due to the water taking up minerals in the ground) is making it slightly basic. I don't know enough about chemistry in this area, but I think the calcium in the water is mostly calcium carbonate, which definitely is basic[1]. So it's no surprise that water taken directly from the tap is making the tea blue, but after removing the calcium carbonate (maybe as part of a removal of any salts) that the tea remains red. I think this hints that an ion exchanger[2] is being used in the "very good water filter" e40 is using. But removing calcium from water (along with other potentially beneficial minerals) is a bad idea, because we need it for building our bones etc. Hopefully those using ion exchanger are still getting enough calcium from other sources. But it's long been said that ion exchangers should not be used to "filter" water. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_exchanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_exchanger PS. you can put some drops of lemon juice into your tea and it will shine red :) (and have a nicer taste)
hoseja 4y ago
That might be iron actually, somehow. I once cut a banana with a carbon steel machette and it turned blue.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  If you pardon my intrusion, may I inquire why were you using a machete to cut a banana?

kazinator 4y ago

"Don't it make my brown eyes^H^H^H^Hsoup blue."

zabzonk 4y ago

> If it turns out that the pigment is caused by P. aeruginosa, they would have to stop working on the blue soup due to its infectious nature. microbiologists work with much more dangerous organisms than pseudomonas all the time. speaking as an ex microbiologist.

twawaaay 4y ago
Not a migrobiologist, but I understand that labs are equipped with progressively more stringent procedures depending on the type of material they can handle. They may work in a very regular, run of the mill lab that is not equipped to deal with anything that is even remotely dangerous. And seeing they have only nitrile gloves for protection and everything lays on the table it looks like this is likely the case. (Not that I ever worked in a lab. My ideas of how lab safety works are based on The Andromeda Strain).
- zabzonk 4y ago
  pseudomonas is a very common urinary tract infection, along with e.coli and proteus, none of which commonly cause deaths. it is not particularly dangerous. using common sense and basic aseptic technique will keep you safe. back when (early to late 70s) we did not use gloves at all, because they were uncomfortable - just washed our hands a lot. nobody ever died or got infected. before i joined, someone did die from the hepatitis virus. we were not a virology lab, but we did do immunology, which is where the blood that caused the death came from - we did use gloves when dealing with that. for the more dangerous organisms, such as mycobacterium tuberculosis, we used air extraction hoods.
  - kragen 4y ago
    i think pseudomonas still qualifies as bsl2 nowadays this is why we can't have nice things
    - zabzonk 4y ago
      ok, i looked that up. i really don't believe ppe does anything useful, i have never seen any double-blind tests that suggests it does. pseudomonas clings to the petri dish agar medium and will not get on your body unless you do something very silly. one way of diagnosing bacterial infections is by smell. for example, if you put your nose next to an agar plate where haemophilus influenzae is growing, you get a very characteristic smell. there are other smells. i have never heard of any microbiologist contracting an infection doing this. too much snowflake stuff here. the most scary thing that happened to me was not dealing with the bacteria, but the reagents and stains we used. i was making up some gram stain (basically iodine and NaOH in solution) when i added the water to the two solids - result steam explosion (because NaOH + H2O is exothermic) in my face. my thought was "shit, you have blinded yourself" but luckily there was an eye-wash bottle and a sink next to me, so my eyes survived. why i did this i have no idea, as i had been taught from the age of 15 to always add solids to water. anyway, so bugger bacteria - chemicals (and steam, electricity etc.) much more dangerous.

Maursault 4y ago

My stomach turned at "meat soup." What is that? Oh, you don't want to hear about that. They lined us up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib. All of us, you know, lined up lookin' at it. Magnificent meat, really! Beautifully marbled. Magnific. Next thing, they're throwin' the meat into these big cauldrons. All of it! Boiling it! I looked inside, man, it was turning grey.

smcl 4y ago
Soup with beef in it is relatively common in the two places I've lived - UK and Czech Republic. Couple of very common examples of "beef soup" from each: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oxtail-soup https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oxtail-soup https://www.daringgourmet.com/traditional-scotch-broth/ https://www.daringgourmet.com/traditional-scotch-broth/ https://www.angusfarm.cz/recepty/hovezi-vyvar-698/ https://www.angusfarm.cz/recepty/hovezi-vyvar-698/ http://www.pradobroty.cz/2019/03/gulasova-polevka.html http://www.pradobroty.cz/2019/03/gulasova-polevka.html I think what the saucier in your quote[0] was upset about was cooking good quality meat very badly, not the idea that meat generally could be used in soup :) [0] - for those who don't know, it's this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFvAaO9j8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFvAaO9j8M
crazygringo 4y ago
It's definitely an odd phrase. "Beef stew" is the normal way to say it. Is "beef soup" a common expression somewhere for the same thing, or is it something different? I don't know what your quote has to do with anything though. Beef stew is the perfect use for tough cuts, simmered for hours.

wazoox 4y ago

Once in 1991 I left some cooked rice in a pot in the kitchen. The next day, it was covered with a bright violet slime. I don't know what it was, but I still remember it vividly (as the colour was).

Scoundreller 4y ago
Possibly b. cereus
- Noumenon72 4y ago
  There's no reason to assume he's not being serious.

dvh 4y ago

Few years ago there was a case in my country where store bought ham/sausage glowed in the dark: https://youtu.be/WgsBF9jzDEw https://youtu.be/WgsBF9jzDEw

ihatepython 4y ago

It's probably due to climate change. Instead of Beef Soup, she should be eating Insect Soup. Most likely, it wouldn't have turned blue.