Fail: Lime Jell-O Salad
Yesterday I wanted to make my grandma's lime Jell-O salad to share at a Bon Voyage party for the departing foreign staff.
If you don't know what lime Jell-O salad is, you must not be from the mid-west. This church pot-luck staple may have a bad wrap (who makes Jell-O molds anymore?) but I truly love the stuff and look forward to when my dad makes it around the holiday season.
Well, every recipe I saw for this stuff calls for CANNED pineapple. Strangely, canned pineapple is really hard to find here in Turkey, but FRESH pineapple is everywhere. I thought, "I'll just use fresh fruit. Fresh IS always better anyway." Turns out I'm wrong on this one.
First off, making this stuff is no little chore here. It calls for several "luxury" items: cream cheese and whipped topping. The whipped topping (Cool Whip, yo) doesn't exist here, but I did happen to have some real Philadelphia cream cheese. I made some stand in whipped topping and got to work on the Jell-O. I had the marshmallows dissolving and the color was just the right milky green and things were starting to set, when I made my fatal mistake.
Turns out, fresh pineapple has an enzyme in it called "bromelain". This enzyme is part of a family called called proteases which break the chemical bonds that try to form between chains of protein as Jell-O sets. How do I know this?
Well, last night I saw that after five hours in the fridge, the Jell-O was still soft and milkshake like in texture. So I reheated the mixture, added some more unflavored gelatin (like three times the amount needed for the volume of liquid) and then put the whole caboodle back in the fridge.
This morning the bowl of green milky liquid from last night was still a bowl of green milky liquid.
I got mad and started up Google so that I could find out what had happened. This is when I discovered several articles, like this one, mentioning the fruit never to use in Jell-O uncooked.
I also found out that the reason all of the recipes call for canned pineapple is that the cooking, or the canning process in this case, makes the enzyme inactive which allows the gelatin to set properly.
Now I know.
If you don't know what lime Jell-O salad is, you must not be from the mid-west. This church pot-luck staple may have a bad wrap (who makes Jell-O molds anymore?) but I truly love the stuff and look forward to when my dad makes it around the holiday season.
 |
| This is the good stuff. See how nice and firm this is? |
First off, making this stuff is no little chore here. It calls for several "luxury" items: cream cheese and whipped topping. The whipped topping (Cool Whip, yo) doesn't exist here, but I did happen to have some real Philadelphia cream cheese. I made some stand in whipped topping and got to work on the Jell-O. I had the marshmallows dissolving and the color was just the right milky green and things were starting to set, when I made my fatal mistake.
Turns out, fresh pineapple has an enzyme in it called "bromelain". This enzyme is part of a family called called proteases which break the chemical bonds that try to form between chains of protein as Jell-O sets. How do I know this?
Well, last night I saw that after five hours in the fridge, the Jell-O was still soft and milkshake like in texture. So I reheated the mixture, added some more unflavored gelatin (like three times the amount needed for the volume of liquid) and then put the whole caboodle back in the fridge.
This morning the bowl of green milky liquid from last night was still a bowl of green milky liquid.
I got mad and started up Google so that I could find out what had happened. This is when I discovered several articles, like this one, mentioning the fruit never to use in Jell-O uncooked.
I also found out that the reason all of the recipes call for canned pineapple is that the cooking, or the canning process in this case, makes the enzyme inactive which allows the gelatin to set properly.
Now I know.
I actually use that as an example when I teach about enzymes. Now I can use you as an example. :)
ReplyDeleteFeel free to use me as an example just so long as you also shamelessly plug my blog by showing this post to your class, or assigning it to them as their reading for the night!
DeleteI may as well capitalize on my cooking failure and get some new readers!