Jello Salads - Tradition or Tragedy?
Forget the traditional ham, turkey or pumpkin pie — my family has a different kind of Midwest Christmas Tradition…jello salads.
Definition: Jell-O salad, or congealed salad is the common name for a molded salad made with flavored gelatin, fruit and sometimes grated carrots or, more rarely, vegetables. Other ingredients may include cottage cheese, cream cheese, marshmallows, nuts or pretzels.
Seeing as how I’m from Iowa — the former Jello capital of the world (seriously, look it up) — it’s no surprise every traditional family meal contains at least one jello-based dish.
It’s a huge joke with my coworkers: “Greg, what kind of jello salad did your grandma make this year?”
Well, I’ll beat you to the punch. This year we had the following “salads” over two days across four family meals: Orange jello topped with marshmallows, Green whipped jello with whipped cream, Red jello with cranberries, and Orange jello with mandarin oranges topped with sour and whipped cream served in fancy wine glasses.
For the record, I didn’t eat a single bite of any of the above dishes. Blech.
I’m pretty burnt out on jello after more than a quarter century being forced fed flavored cow bone dust with random fruit and veggies mixed in. Who determined gelatin + fruit = salad, anyway?
Does your family loooove the jello salad? Any other gross food traditions you shared this holiday?
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Those particular jello salad variations you described are way better than I was expecting.
Green jello of any kind is unacceptable. And under no circumstances should a non-fruit item be mixed in with the jello. Also, jello is not an acceptable substitution for cranberries.
I was gonna say if the fruit/jello concoction is good enough, it should stand alone without whipped topping, but I wouldn’t say no to some Cool Whip.
Jell-O is an abomination! It’s so flavorless! I think it’s one of those things that’s popular because it’s extremely cheap on a price per cubic inch measurement. So, you can fill a huge bowl with a box or two of Jell-O and a can of fruit and feed a whole family.
My grandma loves the fruit jello salad. I do too. But I just don’t make them. They’re a special grandma’s house thing, and I’m definitely down with that.
My folks are both from Iowa (yay Jello!) and we always had Jello “salads” at holidays. The best/worst was this greenish stuff my aunt used to make with green Jello, cottage cheese, pineapple chunks and god knows what else. It didn’t taste bad, necessarily, just weird. Not a flavor you expected. However, I’m sure you can still find a recipe for such a thing if you buy one of the many church cookbooks that are available in small towns across Iowa.
…buh?
What’s with all the jello hate?
The stuff being talked about right now sounds… strange. Cottage cheese? Vegetables?
I’ve always just had red jello with raspberries. Delicious.
I’d say the use of the word “salad” is pretty liberal.