Equus Mushroom Soup...

Has anyone ever had it our of the can? I had a bad experience with it last night.

Having never eaten at Equus, but having heard good things about it, we bought their canned mushroom soup at the Highland's ValuMarket. It tasted extremely metallic, more like the can it came in than mushrooms. Would that happen if it had sat too long on the shelf? Also, while I was heating it up, I checked the label to see if it told what kind of mushrooms were in the soup. I was shocked to see PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL on the ingredient list. At $5.99 for a 14 oz. can of non-condensed soup, I would expect the finest ingredients, NOT poisonous trans fats (I know they are FDA approved at low levels). Do most (non-fast food) restaurants use hydrogenated oils? Am I just naive for thinking that nicer restaurants avoid trans fats?

Being that we have tried to eliminate hydrogenated oils from our diet months ago, we do not purchase anything with them listed on the ingredient list. I guess we have gotten used to which brands to buy and forgot to check the label (our own fault), thinking that it would not be present in the locally made products of a respected restaurant.

Has anyone else ever experienced this? It really was disappointing, but possibly just the supermarket's fault for keeping a product on the shelf too long? I have loved all the other locally made products I have tried, so hopefully, this was a fluke. Next time I will be checking the label, however.

Gretchen,

I can't speak to your particular can of soup, but we used to carry it at the store along with other Equus products and never had any problems- in fact I know some customers are addicted to that particular soup.

Did you check the date on the can? It should have had a "use by" or "best by" date. But it's doubtful to me that expiration would be the problem: most canned foods have a one or 2 year life. It may have been a bad batch for some reason: even the best production process will have an occasional blip. I'd go back to Valuemarket and ask for a refund and/or exchange so everyone know about the problem. Without feedback from the consumer, it's doubtful that Valuemarket, Equus and/or the distributor are aware of a problem if there is one. Several times we ended up being the first to identify production/quality products for our suppliers: since we were small and focused on quality, I think our customers were great about letting us know when there was a problem.

Regarding trans fats: in my experience, most "better" restaurants are not going to use them very much, if at all. But I understand that it's a problem for the local bakeries to get rid of them quickly as some of their supplies (coatings, etc) have them: I read an article about Plehn's and trans fats just last week. (but can't find it on-line now).

Deb

Maybe this is the article.

http://www.wave3.com/global/story.asp?s ... =Printable

I would not assume that just because you are eating at a "nice" restaurant that you are not getting trans fats. In fact, it is actually easier for large chains to afford the (typically) more expensive and more difficult to use alternatives to high trans fat items than it is for small, local places to do so.

Several studies have shown that you are just as likely to find transfat in high end restaurants as you are in fast food joints. Given the rapid move away from the use of transfats by some of the large fast food chains, you may even be more likely to encounter it.

Obviously, I cannot speak for local restaurants owners, and have no insignt into exactly what oils and shortening they use in their food prep, but trans fats are not only found in cheap, mass produced foods. You have to be careful of everything you eat everywhere you eat it.

[Robin Garr]

Has anyone ever had it our of the can? I had a bad experience with it last night.

I think that the mushroom fumé at Equus is one of the most wonderful soups on the planet, and I could eat a gallon of it at a sitting.

With all respect to Dean, for whom I have nothing but respect, I don't think canned product is ever going to taste like the real thing, no matter how carefully he supervises it. We've tried the canned a few times and basically said "Meh." It's a whale of a lot better than Campbell's Cream of Mushroom, but it's just not the same as the fresh-made Equus soup. It can't be.

As for trans fats, good catch. Yes, they're still in wide use (which may justify a law - that stuff serves NO good purpose except to save the producer money), but I would hope that good folks like the Equus team would be leaders in a voluntary effort to get 'em out of our food <i>right now</i>.

I can tell you that it is indeed quite difficult for small local businesses to avoid transfats. After switching to a TFF (trans fat free) shortening product and getting nothng but complaints from customers, I've switched back. There are many reports of icing separating into sugar and oil while on the cake. Cake is dry and has a texture like bread. (Good for bread but cake needs a finer crumb.) While big baking companies can reformulate, none of my recipes work (well, actually one works because it has oil in it). Of course box mixes will work because they use oil, but I prefer the taste of scratch cakes.

There are a few TFF products on the market, some are perfectly awful and the one that I found that works is 2-3 times more expensive and must be special ordered.

It's a tough time right now. I'm sure we'll all get it figured out eventually, and suppliers will start offering more reliable products. I suspect that they will be consistenly more expensive, however, which will in turn drive up retail prices.

Thanks for the responses.

Robin, I appreciate the opinion on the soup from someone who has had both fresh & canned, especially since your most current review states that this is your wife's favorite soup! I never expected the canned version to be as good as it would be if I had it fresh at the restaurant, but I never expected it to taste metallic, like the can. When I get my nerve up, I may go try it at the restaurant as mushroom soup is one of my favorites.

Leah, as far as trans fats go in commercial baking, I would rather pay more to avoid them, but perhaps most people would not. I usually bake from scratch and don't need to worry about this, but I do have one surprisingly good recipe that doctors up a box cake mix. I was pleased to find an Archer Farms chocolate cake mix at Target that was trans fat free... all the other major brands have hydrogenated oils listed in the ingredients. I did read an interesting article in the Costco magazine in December about how they are eliminating trans fats from their bakery. They might possibly be selling the TFF product they are using in the bakery in the warehouse... the article said they get their nuts & things right off the warehouse shelves. It might be worth investigating.