soup strainer

plural soup strainers · alternative soup-strainer

1. A device or implement used as a strainer for soup.

   2007, G. Gopal, Delicious Dishes (Vegetarian), Sura Books, page 77, When cool, pass the cooked mixture through a soup strainer.

   2 more examples

   In the drawers should be kept cooking knives and forks, larding and trussing needles, wooden spoons and forks; also jelly-bags, dish towels, linen soup-strainers, fish cloths, and a large piece of cheese-cloth that may be torn in convenient pieces as wanted; a roll of tape and a ball of linen twine for trussing.

   1884, Sarah Tyson Rorer, Mrs. Rorer's Philadelphia Cook Book: A Manual of Home Economies, page 544

   Remove and pass through a fine mesh soup strainer into a separate handi/pan.

   2004, Jiggs Kalra, Pushpesh Pant, Classic Cooking Of Punjab, Allied Publishers, page 40

2. humorousA moustache, particularly a handlebar moustache, that droops.

   2013, Jon Sharpe, The Trailsman, No. 376: New Mexico Madman, Penguin (New American Library, Signet), page 21, He was a thickset man with a huge soup-strainer mustache and a pockmarked face.

   2 more examples

   Though tawny-skinned, he easily passed himself off as white, growing a thick soup-strainer of a mustache to complete the disguise of his pale gray eyes.

   1976, Matt Braun, Buck Colter, St. Martin's Press, page 26

   2004, Ronald E. Yates, Finding Billy Battles, California Times Publishing, unnumbered page, Charley stroked his goatee and moustache. "I don't know. I got this here soup strainer and chin whiskers now, and I didn't in Tombstone. […] "