Vetara’s Bio Groentebouillon soup mix not kosher for chicken soup?

My wife Jody makes the greatest chicken soup. I’m not getting paid to say that, nor getting any other domestic perks. It’s just downright awesome. It’s more like a stew, with whole turkey necks (that actually makes it “turkey soup” but don’t tell the kids), tons of vegetables, barley and some secret spices. There are also a couple of tablespoons of organic vegetable soup mix.

Jody has been making the soup for years, but as Passover has come chametz’ing its way in, Jody wanted to check the label of our soup mix at the store, to see if it was kosher for Pesach, before buying a new jar. As she ran through the ingredients, she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.

One of the ingredients…was milk.

The ramifications, if true, were devastating. It would mean that we would have been mixing milk and meat, eating treife chicken soup…for nearly 18 years (since we moved to Israel). With such a serious sin, why not just move on to the next level and drip some pig fat into our soup?

Jody put down the jar of soup mix, finished her shopping and quickly returned home where she pulled out her nearly depleted jar of pre-Pesach mix. There was no milk listed. It must have been some sort of change in the product. Jody breathed a sigh of relief. No baby goats would need to be sacrificed at the Temple this year.

Still, it didn’t make sense. Why would there be milk in a vegetable soup mix? The manufacturer – a Dutch company – had written “Controlled Vegetarian” all over the package, although that was for the old jar.

There’s probably an all parve replacement, hopefully just as organic. We’ll check after the holiday. In the meantime, if you are a consumer of Vetara’s Bio Groentebouillon soup mix and you use it in your fleishedik soup, and you keep kosher, consider yourself warned.

A happy – and kosher – Passover!