Howdy, Jigglers! This week I picked up one of my favorite classic Jell-O mold designs. On my way home from the store, I was thrilled as I contemplated all the recipes that would look slick in that mold--that is, of course, until I checked the list of recipes I had chosen to make next and saw that the first one was Barbecue Salad.
This recipe has about a thousand variations. The problem is that none of them sounds good. You've got the regular salad, which is basically just a congealed Bloody Mary, you've got the cubes, which is congealed Bloody Mary concentrate, you've got a bunch of additions you can use to disguise the fact that you're eating a Bloody Mary, you've got shrimp cocktail with a congealed Bloody Mary, and you've got Barbecue Cheese Cracker Pie, which is a congealed Bloody Mary served atop a Cheez-It crust for some reason. Faced with this plethora of unappetizing options, I chose to make a Barbecue Salad with some additions because I've been down the "tomato sauce and nothing else" gelatin road, and I don't want to travel that road ever again.
Specifically, I chose to add lemon zest, celery salt, Worschester sauce, Tabasco, mayonnaise in a separate layer of the mold, some corn, and some peas. Corn and peas are fine accompaniments to barbecue, plus they should add some much-needed texture. Mayonnaise makes just about everything go over smoother (my husband calls me the Mayo Queen for this reason), and Worschester and spicy sauce never hurt a savory dish, I'm pretty sure. I used lemon juice in place of the lemon Jell-O flavoring, so I just threw in the zest to make it extra zingy, and I used some celery salt in place of regular salt to mimic the celery salad Jell-O flavor--also because my subconscious couldn't ignore the fact that I was making a Bloody Mary here.
In this view you can see the top mayonnaise-laden layer of the mold. To get it to stick to the main layer, I mixed about 12 teaspoons of the gelatin mixture into roughly a half cup of mayo once the gelatin was very thick. Then I poured the mayo mixture into the mold and popped it into the fridge while I added the vegetables to the main salad. Finally, I poured the main salad on top of the mayo layer in the mold. Since the mayo layer started melting upon unmolding, next time I would add maybe twice the amount of gelatin that I did, which should help it stay together a little better.
To fully appreciate (or distract me from) this dish, I also chose to serve it first alongside some actual barbecue. I made some oven-baked country-style ribs according to this recipe. That way I could really see how well or how terribly the Barbecue Salad fits with a barbecue meal.
Yes, it looks a bit like an evil jellyfish. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the way this salad tasted. While it wasn't at all reminiscent of barbecue per se, it also wasn't reminiscent of tomato snot. The corn and peas gave it some texture, and the mayonnaise made it creamy. The gelatin part itself was mostly tangy from the lemon and savory in general, with a little hint of spice at the tail end. Not bad at all!
I was so conerned about how awful this recipe was going to be that I procrastinated for at least a month on Jell-O making because of it. Now I feel incredibly silly for having done so, especially given that I know I will end up eating every scrap of this salad.
Since I added the mayonnaise layer, I ended up with some extra salad gelatin that fit neatly into an individual mold. I was concerned that the chunky nature of this salad would prevent the ridges from showing up, but there they are!
Now, as much as I have been praising the taste of Barbecue Salad, let me reiterate: this has nothing in common with barbecue. It would be fine as a side salad with barbecue, sure, but it would be equally fine as a side salad with just about anything. Roast chicken, egg salad, Reubens, shish kabobs...the possibilities are endless. In fact, the recipe notes constantly bug you to eat this with shrimp as though it were a gelatinized cocktail sauce, and in practice it isn't that different. I could even imagine little cubes of the mixture topped with individual shrimp on a cocktail stick as a fairly decent hors d'ourve. As much as I wasn't anticipating this, you might be onto something with this one, General Foods!
