Gelatin Breaks Out of Its Mold.

[elleng]

'Lovable and wonderfully retro, jello salad gets a joyful update with natural touches from fresh clementine juice and pomegranate seeds.

*Of course, it’s also wonderfully retro. It’s a great showpiece for a dinner party or buffet for relatively little effort, and, when you make one from scratch, substituting fresh juice and fruit for artificial flavoring and color, it can be spectacular.

Tart clementine juice and juicy blood-red pomegranate seeds make an especially elegant version, a light, refreshing dessert that’s perfect for the holidays. Seedless small clementines or satsumas are best, even if they are a little fiddly to juice. You could also use a combination of fresh orange, lime or lemon juice or substitute sparkling wine for part of the liquid.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/dining/jello-salad-recipe.html?

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. I love a gelatin salad!

Undoubtedly from my southern roots.

I have one I make, and when I first tell folks what’s in it, they say ewwww.
One taste, and ummmm. My sister in law can eat the whole bowl.

Lime jello
Finely chopped celery, scallions, green bell pepper.

Make jello, mix veggies together, and put on top of jello. Allow to set.

Great for a pot luck.

[Hortensis]

7. Yes. :) Lime and beautifully clear here for

summer, with anything else I care to toss in. I've tried some fresh juices and teas instead of packaged jello, but so far haven't had the big payoff for the bother.

In winter tomato aspic with spicy V8 or clamato, bloody Mary mix, whatever I have, with a lot of veggies added and possibly seafood. But always celery and scallions, and usually bell pepper.

[htuttle]

2. Only if it's generally fruit based...

I have nightmares about savory gelatin recipes, as I am a child of the 60's and 70's.

[Arkansas Granny]

3. I'm with you. I've seen too many of these:

[Hortensis]

8. How funny. I'd run fast and far to escape those peas.

But I love elegantly clear and flavorful aspics, and with vegetables I enjoy I'd love a lunch built around a slice of that.

Not the same thing, but how about this? Seafood Aspic with Tomato Chili Sauce. It has a few little veggies in it. Still evokes old trauma? It just says Florida to me, so I saved the idea and will look for a somewhat different recipe when we're down there again.

[Phentex]

4. Just the other night I was mocked for saying I liked jello...

it's something I rarely have but when I do, I love it.

Yeah, well, the conversation started with talk of colonoscopies and ended up with who likes/hates jello.

[japple]

5. My Mom had a love for jello, probably because it was cheap and versatile. She did a lot of

canned fruit cocktail/jello desserts with cool whip. I always liked it, esp. that wiggly mouth feel, but I hated those white grapes in canned fruit cocktail. I wonder if fresh white grapes would be an improvement? My Mother-in-law always made a cranberry jello salad for Christmas, which she served on a lettuce leaf, but ruined it by putting a blob of mayonaise on top.

[Hortensis]

6. I also love good gelatin salads of all types,

veggie, fruit, seafood. Last summer I tried a chicken aspic as a centerpiece for a salad, and it tasted cool and luscious out on the porch. But I tried to make it with chicken wings for the gelatin, and just "winged" a pinch of the power, and it turned out too loose, didn't take a picture. .

A favorite use, but here in the Bible Belt can rarely serve and can't finish ourselves, is with alcohol as a dessert in summer. This is wasted on shooters.

The mentality that's blighted dishes with gelatin for the past couple decades is really a shame. Of course fresh ingredients have become far more used, as with other dishes, and one assumes most of the weirder 1950s creations are abandoned safely to the past. Anyway, the worst of the old family favorites that refuse to die and show up each Thanksgiving aren't worse than that green bean in mushroom soup thing.

[seaglass]

9. My MIL and husband's aunt used to make Coke Salad and I sure loved it.

The only variations were canned dark cherries instead of pie filling, dark cherry jello and the addition of finely chopped walnuts:


1 can (20 ounces) crushed pineapple
1/2 cup water
2 packages (3 ounces each) cherry gelatin
1 can (21 ounces) cherry pie filling
3/4 cup cola

[Retrograde]

10. Hate to say it, but

this sounds like it's worth making! I'd definitely go with the dark cherries instead of the pie filling, if only for the visual interest.

[dem in texas]

11. Kid Pleasers

I used to make strawberry jello with sliced bananas, lime jello with fruit cocktail, orange jello with canned pears, all were popular with my kids when they were young. Do children eat jello anymore?

I used to have to drive down to Austin for my job. When I'd drive back to Dallas, I stopped for dinner at the Stagecoach Inn in Salado. The food and décor was 1950's time warp and they served tomato aspic.