by Erica
When RetroRuth let me know we’d be starting to test a new decade of recipes, I was pretty excited. I grew up in the 80’s. I knew about this food from experience.
Or so I thought, until I saw my first assignment: Broccoli Ring.
The 80’s had gelatin, too? Were the people making this in the 80’s nostalgic for the jellied broccoli salads of their youth?
- 1 pound fresh broccoli or two 10-ounce packages frozen chopped broccoli
- 1 envelope unflavored gelatin
- 1 14-1/2-ounce can beef broth
- 3/4 cup mayonnaise or salad dressing
- 4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 4 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
- Leaf lettuce
- Wash fresh broccoli; remove the outer leaves and tough parts of stalks. Chop broccoli. In saucepan cook chopped fresh broccoli, uncovered, in a small amount of boiling salted water for 8 to 10 minutes or till just tender. (Or cook frozen broccoli according to package directions.) Drain.
- In medium saucepan soften the gelatin in the broth. Stir over low heat till gelatin is dissolved. Remove from heat. Stir in the mayonnaise or salad dressing, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and salt. Fold in drained broccoli and chopped eggs. Pour into a 5-1/2-cup ring mold. Cover and chill several hours or overnight or till firm.
- To serve, unmold onto a lettuce lined plate. If desired, fill center of ring with additional lettuce, whole or halved cherry tomatoes, and broccoli buds. Makes 10 servings.
Beef broth, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce — not what I’d generally choose to put on either broccoli or eggs, and certainly not both.
This is mixing mayonnaise into beef broth gelatin.
I really don’t know what more can be said about that.
Oddly, the gelatin broth and mayonnaise mixture wasn’t really thick enough to “fold” the broccoli and egg in. So I just sort of dumped the liquid stuff in, then mushed the chunks around until they were uniformly distributed and covered by liquid.
“This looks great!”
Note, dear reader, that this is said in a hearty tone of enthusiasm: our kids were looking suspiciously at the food, and Buzz was faking excitement to avoid scaring them.
They didn’t fall for it. They just started looking suspiciously at him.
As soon as it was touched by a fork, the “ring” section crumbled and turned into a pile of disorganized goop.
“This is edible!”
“That’s a surprisingly happy face for such a weak review.”
“I didn’t gag, so it’s a success.”
Verdict: Edible, but still a crime against broccoli.
From The Tasting Notes:
The mayonnaise and various seasonings were pretty good with both the broccoli and eggs. The gelatinous bits of beef broth were not pretty good. The problem is more texture than flavor, though they didn’t taste great. Aside from fancy presentation — which should have been left to much earlier decades — there’s never any reason to gelatinize a perfectly good broccoli-egg salad.