The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

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• Hacker News
• Disgusting.
  by andrewstuart
• *52 years concentrated heavy metal soup.
  by feverzsj
• Why concentrated?
  by polishdude20
• The grime around the pot convinced me they’re telling the truth about 52 years :)
  by manoDev
• > The grime

  Oh, you mean the flavoring!

  by stronglikedan
• I've seen this done for a few years (2-3?) but only in a crockpot sized container, honestly still tasted alright. Not sure I'd have a full bowl of stew 52 but seems [great] for fermenty-salty dipping sauce like saltwater.
  by bescob_ar
• Is this like how Italian families sometimes a forever pot of tomato sauce continuously on a low heat on their stoves?
  by rkozik1989
• I've never heard of anyone doing this among any Italian Americans I know. Is this something you've seen first hand?
  by ch4s3
• This Italian here has never heard nothing like that. Tomato sauce can be simmered for several hours, but there is no refill.
  by pif
• This was something I was genuinely excited to try while in Bangkok, took a Grab across town to make it happen, but it was it is honestly not good, the Google reviews seem to coincide with the consensus that while the concept is cool, the execution isn't and it tastes very meh.

  I do wonder if there’s some pluralistic ignorance going on, where travelers convince themselves it must be amazing because everyone else seems to think so.

  It didn't give off the vibe of years of collected flavors; it was a thin broth and it didn't taste like much else other than beef broth from a fancy instant noodle packet and a ton of MSG (and to be clear, I'm normally a proponent of MSG but it genuinely was overdone here).

  Maybe it really is just the volume that they're going through that's affecting the taste and composition, because they were doing decent business, but this was the biggest disappointment on my short visit to Bangkok.

  by spelk
• No this place has always been mid, years before they got famous.
  by joeguilmette
• Seems reasonable to conclude that people might do it to say that they did it, for the same sort of reasons why one might get a warm pint in a run-down, cramped, 500-year-old pub instead of a cold pint at a newly-opened, comfortable pub
  by Brendinooo
• I wouldn't expect this to be better tasting than a regular soup/stew. If you keep eating it, new stuff added today has been almost completely consumed in a week.

  I would eat it out of respect for the craft and the values that are being preserved.

  by abdullahkhalids
• Wouldn't toxics like nitrites accumulate over the years? Also, I'd assume the purpose of perpetual soup is to concentrate the aroma and the taste, but is there going to be a diminishing return?
  by hintymad
• Forever soup isn't new, of course.

  Poor families do it to cheaply make long lasting meals.

  My late maternal grandmother used to have a pot of forever soup on the stove, and she would put whatever she had on hand in.

  Spare ribs, check. Leftover veg, check. McDonalds fries, gross, but check.

  by julianlam
• One of my grandfather's favorite jokes whenever we visited was to yell across the house that guests had arrived, and to add some more water to the soup.

  Of course, my grandmother was a farmer all her life before I was born, so she was always making far too much food (nobody ever left hungry was a mark of pride) but it took some growing up before I really contemplated the kind of life that joke would have come from.

  And yes, always had soup going.

  by zdragnar
• I'm currently in bangkok atm. where can I go try this soup?
  by cultofmetatron
• Its on Ekkamai rd, "Wattana Panich"
  by tedeh
• Wattana Panich is absolutely not worth waiting in line for. Any number of places make a better version of that dish.

  If you want to wait in line for something actually worth waiting for: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GodS2ozgTYR1K4kGA?g_st=ic

  I always get the pad kapow with half crispy pork and their sour pork soup. My wife gets the pad kapow with glass noodle. Their spice levels are accurately described. If you are not tolerant to spice, definitely get one of the lower levels, they aren’t over the top and the dish does need some chili.

  Also, feel free to get in touch for more places to go and things to do (lived here for over a decade): firstname.lastname at gmail.

  by joeguilmette
• https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g293916-d87...

  Actual customer reviews are less gushing than the WSJ article....

  by Alien1Being
• https://archive.ph/syGNG
  by thesuitonym
• One of the speculations as to how life was created on this planet: stable environments hosting hydrothermal vents over long periods of time.

  Could perpetual stews over decades act in the same manner?

  by x______________
• Maybe! Let's try it in a sterile environment, a few million of such stews over a few millions of years.
  by actionfromafar
• I've gone without a fridge for 8 years now and do something kind of like this usually - I'll cook a pot of food and then steam or boil it again after ~24 hours to reset the clock on it rotting. It's handy for things like eating a whole chicken or other large soup. I switch between being home and on the road a lot so my pot just comes with me and can be re-cooked on my car stove or my home stove. I tend to cook or re-heat once a day. Ideally I'd rather be sharing freshly prepared food with other people every meal and I do that when I can, but this works for when I'm feeding myself alone - cheaper and easier than any other approach.
  by lithocarpus
• Resetting it will kill bacteria, certainly. But there are a number of heat-stable toxins that once created will not be destroyed that way.

  I guess you've been doing this for a while, and presumably it's been working, plus I know that historically this is how people lived. But be aware it's not risk free.

  A suggestion: A pressure cooker - not for the pressure, but because they can be sealed. Heat the food, then let it cool without opening it. Kind of a less secure form of canning.

  by ars
• During winter I'll run a perpetual stew pot for a few days, maybe week+ because it's going towards heating anyways.
  by maxglute
• The bacteria is still there, its just dead. Along with all of its waste. Leaving soup at room temperature over night is crazy. Its usually the biggest food borne illness vector in restaurants so they usually boil then move straight to cooling.

  Ive learned leaving soup out and reboiling is fairly common in some cultures which is unfortunate. Bacteria rapidly multiplies at room temperature around the world (well, maybe not antarctica).

  by nonethewiser
• I think there is an optimization question buried here. In tech lots of people have experience with A/B tests, which function on the assumption that you have a stream of fresh sessions which are independent. Multi-armed bandits, Thompson sampling etc give us frameworks for generalizing this towards finding the best option among a finite set of candidates, if goodness is fixed over time. This is kinda the opposite end of a spectrum: you get to run one policy at a time and the whole premise is that goodness is heavily state dependent. How do you decide whether to keep going with your current policy vs when to start over with another?

  Sure, the soup is good ... but is it the best they could have after 52 years? By committing to maintaining one pot for so long, they pay the opportunity cost of not being able to explore related long-lived methods. If there's a different recipe that surpasses this one after only one year of simmering, they'll never find it.

  At first I thought this might be related to the secretary problem, but of course if after 50 years of recipe B, you have the option of switching back to recipe A if it's better.

  by abeppu
• I see no reason to believe the quality could be improved over a more normal cook period. Even super long boils like tonkotsu can be achieved by other means (pressure). IMO its more of a gimmick and frankly kinda gross.
  by nonethewiser
• https://archive.is/syGNG
  by kameit00