Slice of ketchup anyone?
(midwest.social)
MemesWasn't ketchup bad enough?
Hear me out:
I spent so long hating tomatoes. Then I had a BLT with Bread and Salt tomatoes and... that changed.
No Way! No one does it like that anymore. Go back to the 90's fossil.
But I want sugar, salt and vinegar too. It adds a pep to it.
I hate tomatoes but like ketchup. They're very different.
Ultraprocessed mystery meat patty?
Yes!
Ultraprocessed buns with exxxtra sugar?
Yummy!
Ultraprocessed processed-tomatoes, but in a slice instead of sludge?
Ewww, no, there is a line!
wow people in the comments are REALLY fired up about the idea of ketchup existing in unfamiliar forms.
Remember when they sold non conforming ketchup colors, such as green, blue, and purple?
It was good but people wouldn't try it even though ketchup is died red. I tried all the colours I found.
Those were the days
Low key that was the peak consumerism era. Maybe from mid 80s-mid 2010s. Pretty much right until they invented "high value" virtual commodities. (nfts, crypto, ai, etc)
like fuck capitalism and the repercussions of that era will last for generations, but that was neat time to be alive.
In American schools, this is considered a serving of vegetables.
This is ketchup leather. It's not a new idea; it's been around since fancy burger places with wood walls and exposed edison light bulbs started to be a thing in the early 2010s.
It's just dehydrated ketchup. It makes ketchup more of a topping than a condiment and helps prevent the problem of everything squirting out of the other side of the bun when you take a bite.
That's not a problem though.
Besides your introduction you make a fairly solid case for this product. Have you tried it?
Sounds to me it would actually work very nicely on a well made restaurant burger (in contrast to fast food burgers), which tend to have juicy meat and therefor have less need for extra lubrication.
I've tried it. The ketchup flavor gets concentrated. It's actually a neat idea and not an abomination against nature like a lot of the comments here. There are plenty of recipes online if you want to make your own at home.
The abomination is how Hellman's had to dumb it down and call it "ketchup slices".
The trick is, they don't use ketchup in restaurant burgers. Not good ones at least...
Isn't this just a tomato with extra steps?
The first ketchup you could use to roll a fatty like dogg lemme hit that Heinz 57 Blunt
This is clearly a terrible idea, one of those where you say, "How did this get the green light?"
One night, just as he was falling asleep, a food scientist employed by the company had a light bulb idea! What if ketchup came in slices, like cheese. The perfect portion, cleanly placed on a burger. Further, you could do a whole line of condiments slices - mustard mayo, relish, BBQ sauce, the list is endless! I'll bet he didn't sleep a wink that night.
The next day, he calls everyone together, and springs his idea, and they all start excitedly discussing it. The supervisor realizes they are on to something, so he goes to corporate.
"I just had this great idea..." (of course he takes credit), and he explains it to The Suit, who immediately understands that he could sell a 12 pack of slices for the same price as a bottle with a hundred servings, increase profits, and please the Ferengi in the boardroom. So he approves the idea enthusiastically, and goes off to take credit to his bosses.
So it all goes into production after all the testing for spoilage and such is done, and nobody ever bothered to see if it tasted decent, or if consumers would accept it. You know there was very little consumer testing done on this because, well, look at it. It's essentially a Tomato-flavored Fruit Roll- Up. You don't even have to taste it to know that this isn't going to have the proper mouthfeel or taste. Not only that, but the consumer is STILL going to need a bottle of ketchup, because he can't dip his fries into a SLICE. Does anyone believe this product was an overwhelming success with a whole series of focus tests?
The whole reason this went into production was because they convinced themselves that this awful product had the potential to be wildly profitable, if they could force the consumer to accept it. The consumer did not accept it, and their focus groups probably told them that, but they either ignored it, or maybe just didn't do focus groups at all. It's a great profitable idea, why endanger it by getting the opinions of the future consumers?
I hope it cost them a lot of money.
An alternate theory:
Some poor bastard at fruit roll-up co finally got the greenlight for his tomato idea, internal testing proved it was terrible, but some marketing genius managed to sell the idea for enough money to offset the r&d costs.
ok but also this uses less plastic than a bottle, takes up less fridge space, and can be useful to those with some types of mobility impairments
They will be individually wrapped lol
im with you, but less space? not sure about that
Half the fun of ketchup is the PpPpPppPpPpptt!
Except when you get juice with it..
You mean ketchup pre
Do you not shake your ketchup first‽
Technically this is fruit leather.
Sure thing, Ronnie, let's get you back to ~~bed~~ dead.
Aren't Tomatos fruit though?
Technically this is a crime against condiments.
More importantly, a crime against humanity.
Or a blood clot
Just slap it on a wound like Flex Tape!
“We sawed this man in half but with just a few of these, he’s once again blood tight!”
Looks like a damn fruit roll-up.
Tomatoes are a fruit, so...
Not in California.
Frisbee
Red plastic 😋
God damnit, I thought for sure this had to be fake, so I had to check, to retain a micron of faith in humanity. But nay, it's real.
How I imagine the meeting went:
"ok we're out of ideas... Let's just go with whatever the next thing said here is."
"... ketchup slices?"
"How do you even?... God damn it... Fine. Ketchup slices. Christ forgive me.."
I think it's more, "fuck... Bad news. Our Newark factory had an operator completely fuck up and use ten times the thickening agent for the ketchup. It came out as a big fucking block, 10 feet cubed of pure ketchup."
"Sir, I have an idea"
Narrator: "Christ did not forgive them."
How about a slice of tomato instead?
Tomatos are kind of gross on burgers. Like, I have thisnwarm tasty burger, lets throw a slab of cold on it to ruin it. Screw that.
thank you
WHERE DA VINIGER AT?!
Whoa, whoa, whoa that doesn’t make a stock price go up
They kinda don't taste the same.
They very much dont taste neither feel the same.
Who comes up with these things?
Capitalists
With the unit price going way up by selling a 10 pack of slices for the cost of a bottle of ketchup, somebody probably got a promotion for this idea.
Great people those capitalists.
I bet they'd get along with my neighbors. I live across from a cemetery
Which is a great way to extract extra revenue from a piece of property.
Pretty sure you can't own people, even if they're dead.
Passive income
Probably the packaging company branching out into yet another type of individually packaged single-use plastic. Ketchup is an untapped market! (Unless you count the restaurant to-go packs, but those suck).
Do you mean the squeeze or dip packets? Those are brilliant.
I haven't heard of dip packets, maybe they're better. The little squeeze packs you have to tear open and put in something else to dip are just a mess, and I don't like having to open so many packets just to finish my fries.
People who should be removed from polite society and left on an island far far away.
I'd try it.
I doubt I'd like it for the things I tend to like ketchup with, because any thickened sauce that firm is going to have less presence on the tongue. Ketchup is a sweet, vinegary punch. You thicken that enough for a slice, and even if it's meltable, you still don't have the same capability of the relevant compounds to spread across the palate in the right way just isn't there.
But it's not some kind of crazy idea. There's plenty of ways to get a "gel" version of a given sauce or condiment. Hell, an aspic isn't exactly far off from this as it is, and tomato aspic is yummy as hell, if not as punchy as ketchup.
When I was a kid, I did some stupid things. And then the other kids punched me.
I stopped doing stupid things.
What I'm saying here, is that kids need to go back to punching the stupid kids. Someone should have punched whoever thought of this.
But my safe space! /s
If it prevents the ketchup from leaking on the other end when biting then I'm willing to try.
Ok, so what you want to do is like zigzags, so when you put the bun down and shift it around a bit you get good coverage, but it'll stay neat. Then you can go literally the rest of your life without that problem. Welcome.
If your burger isn't leaking juices out the back when you bite into it, I think there's room for improvement.
I think people have different tastes on this matter 😄
If the meat doesn't drip it's not a burger but a brick.
What's the point of a burger of the condiments don't end up on the plate for you to dip the burger into?
I like having clean hands while I eat a burger.
But you're holding the food with your hands?
With my hands that are not covered in condiments and toppings because a reasonable amount was applied to a good bun. The quality of the bun is important too.
Out of all the burgers I've had, the best ones have been very juicy and made a huge mess of my plate / hands. It's a worthy sacrifice in my opinion.
Honestly I'm intrigued. I don't love the individual plastic wrapping, but it does seem like a good way to get ketchup all the way on the edges without worrying about spilling it everywhere
How hard is putting ketchup on a burger with a squeeze bottle, and a tiny opening? I've never "worried" about it.
Seriously... the mental gymnastics to justify consumerism are pitiful
"Im aware that its surrounded in single use plastic but im willing to sacrifice anyway"
for some people with physical disabilities it could be pretty hard
Yes we must relieve people from the burden of having to master the difficult skill of putting condiments on a burger.
I'm from Texas, so they only taught us in school how to abstain with burgers.
I love the dirty
You can barely make out that she’s doing that YouTube thumbnail face in the last one
That looks like the same texture as the dried ketchup that gets stuck around the inside of the ketchup lid. Rubbery. Have never even been tempted to consider eating the rubbery goop on the inside of a ketchup lid.
I'd try it. Is it really any more "processed" than ketchup already is?
I mean, ketchup doesn't have to be horrendously processed. You can get a basic ketchup by mixing purreed tomatoes, vinegar, salt and sugar.
But sure, whatever these burger chains typically serve as ketchup, that has many more ingredients...
Pat this baby next to a slice of ultra processed american cheese and reach burgerland enlightenment.
I'll take a slice of peanut butter, a slice of mayonnaise, and a slice of banana in the middle.
You’ll fuck right off is what you’ll do
Fuck, you're right, I forgot the slice of pickle and slice of raddish.
Peanut butter burgers are pretty popular where I live. I thought it was weird, but it oddly works.
As for the banana, that can fuck right off
Surely it's melt back to liquid on a hot burger? I can see why this could be used, presuming it tastes fine.
The problem is what ingredients might be added to make it a solid at room temperature.
Cancer roulette
Sometimes a thing is just figured out and that's okay. You don't have to keep trying to "innovate" or whatever.
