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Stupid Orange Juice Tricks: In A Shrimp Boil? On Cereal?

I just can’t pass up the chance to comment on two posts I found this morning on what I consider to be stupid things to do with Orange Juice. Well, one is an OJ ‘collab’, but the other uses a self-proclaimed ‘orange-flavored citrus punch’ as the base for a mammoth Shrimp Boil…

Tropicana Cereal - © 2022 Tropicana‘Cereal made for OJ’: And we thought OJ-on-cereal was something big sisters
did to bug little brothers back, for bugging them in the first place…

The Tropicana breakfast trope

A ‘trope’ is defined by Oxford as ‘a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression’. Tropicana has created a physical one, using orange juice. And, unfortunately, it’s a play on an old joke/prank, as well (see photo caption, above).

But Tropicana and, apparently, a lot of folks who lurk on social media have been trying the juice cereal combo with greater or lesser satisfaction, lately. And in honour of Orange Juice Day (this past Wednesday, May 4), the juice brand launched, ‘The First Cereal Made For OJ (And Maybe The Last)’.

It’s really a boxful of sweet honey almond clusters, flavoured intentionally NOT to go well with milk. I’ve been pranked with OJ on my cornflakes before, and I have to say, especially for someone who’s been eating them with milk for decades, the contrast is jarring in the extreme. I can’t imagine what the new cereal tastes like, before or after adding the OJ.

I can’t help wondering how long Tropicana Crunch cereal will remain ‘on the market’. It’s available only at the product’s website and, we assume, ‘only while supplies last’. On the up side, it’s free – one box per person.

As Tropicana’s ad writers say, “It may not be for everyone (but it could be for you!)”

Sunny D goes to N’Walins

That’s an attempt to spell ‘New Orleans’ as spoken using the down-south drawl we’re all familiar with. ‘Cause the popular non-juice orange-flavoured beverage is used by a viral Tik Tok chef as the liquid in a daring shrimp Boil.

The guy behind the recipe is @chefjayvoo, who has more than 3 million Tik Tok followers. And he’s created a major online hoop-la. Opinions are flying like the seeds from the first dandelion of the season in a high wind. You’re either with him or against him. There is no middle ground.

The recipe starts with about 2 gallons / 8 L of Sunny D  brought to the boil over a big fire, to which the kooky chef adds bell peppers, other vegetables (largely, potatoes and celery) chunks of sausage, garlic, a lasagne-dish sized plastic tub of seasonings and spices, and thirty-five pounds of Louisiana shrimp. The spuds and other root veggies go in first, because they take longest to cook; the shrimp go in last.

Here’s another case of using an Orange flavoured beverage instead of the liquid a recipe (or type of recipe) usually calls for. And I wonder if Sunny D is the best stuff to be using to get that orange tang? According to Wikipedia, Sunny D is only, ‘superficially related to orange juice, but also resembles a soft drink without carbonation.”

The ingredients list shows it’s mostly water and high-fructose corn syrup – a noted villain in the war against added sugar in beverages. And as for orange juice, there’s only about 2 percent actual concentrated juices the mix, and that includes orange, lime, apple, tangerine and grapefruit. The rest of it is chock full of 4 different artificial colours, citric acid and other flavourings, and a whole bunch of preservatives. One can assume that real orange juice wasn’t sweet enough to balance out the savoury, spicy up-front character of the shrimp boil’s flavour profile.

Anyway…

There you have two really nutty (in my humble opinion) misuses of orange flavour in otherwise common recipes. Why? Only the chefs concerned know for sure. Except, perhaps, that the wacky dishes were premiered on (and for) Orange Juice Day. A case of folks with nothing better to do who got a cray idea and decided to do it – just because they could. Not a scenario that usually turns out well when food is involved…

~ Maggie J.