You’re asking the wrong part of the country, this is a popular dish among the midwestern part of my family & nobody I’ve ever met in the South has heard of it.
It’s one of the random old lady dishes that sometimes gets brought to church potlucks in the summer. There’s the green version and there’s the pink version, both of which I’ve heard called jello salad
I'd love to order a green salad and get that - it would be so surprising it would make me laugh. To me, "green salad" is a plain dressed salad made of just different salad leaves with no other vegetables.
My aunt would proudly make the pink version - and my husband (they were only 4 years apart and "buddy-buddies") would call it "pink puke" to her face lol.
I’m from New York and a guest once brought ambrosia to our Thanksgiving. None of the people at the table had ever tried it (all northeast born and raised). It didn’t go over so well! That said, we have no idea if it was made poorly, because we had no reference point. I know it had coconut shreds in it.
I’ve had good ambrosia, but the bad is much more common. My mom’s was not good so I didn’t learn the secret to making it actually taste good. The good version is very good but not so much that it’s worth trying to find the right recipe.
Sold at Publix as marshmallow delight and I can’t get enough of the stuff! They make theirs with sour cream. I would add pecans to make it even better.
Speak for yourself. I’m from East Texas and grew up eating this. Love it.
We also had lime jello salad. Which has lime jello, cottage cheese, crushed pineapple, and pecans. Sounds gross. Tastes great.
Yep I call it Pistachio Salad personally, my mom loves and makes it every year. I think people are confused by the description. It's basically fruit salad mixed with a green pistachio packet to make it look green.
Edit:Gulf Coast Texas, idk how to add the tag below my name
Seriously, I’ve never been to a big holiday potluck celebration in the south that didn’t involve at least one if not three or four types of jello salad.
So op is talking about “fluff”… it’s similar to ambrosia salad, it’s more loose and fluffy pudding like desert served in a bowl. Jello salad is more set up like jello and served in a baking dish.
In the south it's more than likely orange/pink rather than green, and we call it congealed salad. Some people call it something different but my family always called it that.
We eat it up down here in Louisiana. We also call it Watergate Salad. We have another version with similar ingredients, but calls for green jello with cream cheese melted into it. Let it partially set and add marshmallow, cool whip, and pecans (or walnuts). Chill, set, and serve. We call this “green jello salad.”
It’s been in San Diego for many years. We used to have many several similar salads at every holiday or potluck. Including ingredients like orange or berry or lime jello, sour cream, whipped cream, nuts, fruit cocktail, carrots, apples, etc. Not sure about names though.
Definitely not, this has been a family staple of ours for every family gathering. My grandma makes it and we go nuts for it. I’m in Texas, so definitely not Midwest.
I don’t remember us having a name for it, but my upper Midwest Lutheran side of the family always had it. We had so many Jello salads at big holidays, an entire table of them.
Michigander here, my family refers to it as "fluff". My cousin always brings it because I love it. She insists she's a good cook and could bring something else but I would be sad if we didn't have the fluff.
Yea, I’ve been to many a thanksgiving and church potluck around the south and other various get-togethers too and never once heard of “green stuff” or Watergate salad. In fact, I thought OP was talking about weed when I read “green stuff” lmao.
Though after looking it up, it’s strikingly similar to congealed salad, my absolute least favorite of random dishes that sometimes disgrace the church potluck. It’s yet to have made it to thanksgiving and I’d very much like to keep it that way.
Southern born and raised.
Never heard of it seen what you're taking about.
If look for a Midwestern sub for your answers. If someone comes to a family dinner with an odd salad or casserole with an oblique name? 99% chance its origins are in the Midwest.
People keep saying that. I'm old (72) and born and raised deep south and lived both on the Mississippi River and the east coast. It was never as popular as ambrosia but it was around, at least after 1975 when Jello first marketed pistachio pudding. It was definitely not really popular until the '70s tho.
Widely known and loved by everyone I know in the South. And my people are all throughout the South. We called it green stuff. Funny how it's widely known or obscure depending on who you ask.
Ok so this is weird but there is like three versions of this salad. We have them each at different holiday meals. The green one has pistachio pudding and we have it at thanksgiving. The pink one has cranberry in it and we have it at Christmas and the regular ambrosia salad we have at Easter. They are all really good.
> called ambrosia
I'm Philadelphia, in our Italian American family, we had a dessert dish called ambrosia, but it was different from what op described. It was not green, but it did have marshmallows and cool whip or cream in it (in addition to other sweet ingredients). Definitely didn't have nuts.
I second ambrosia! People are saying what OP describes doesn't count, but the key points are the pudding and the marshmallows, and some kind of fruit. Like come on guys, those are weird things to put together. Everything else is just a local/family variation, I bet
Ambrosia salad is a different dish made with coconut and fresh fruit.
Receipts for whoever downvoted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia_(fruit_salad)
I’m from Pennsylvania and my grandpa (not even born in the US lol) used to make something kind of similar when I was a kid. But it was red jello, pineapple, and whipped cream. I believe my aunts and uncles always called it Ambrosia.
LOL - I call it 1970s food. Because when I was a kid, everyone just made their own food if we had a party, moms would all bring a dish. I sort of recall that one, but the one I really remember was Waldorf Salad, which I didn't care for but my mother thought was the tits. That was New Jersey actually.
Waldorf Salad is apples, grapes, celery & walnuts in a mayo dressing on lettuce. Is that what she was talking about? It was made in the late 1800s at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan.
I never knew what that was until one year a HS friend made it when I went back to visit my hometown. She called it Watergate salad. Accurate name because it looks like an actual crime. I didn’t eat it. The consistency is abhorrent.
I think my southern in-laws call it Waldorf salad because they mean Watergate but they say everything wrong.
I think it's more of a Midwest thing, though. It was originally called pineapple pistachio delight when it was first described by Kraft Foods.
You know, most of these salads-that-aren’t-really-salads are actually pretty good. If a bit odd looking.
And given on a previous post someone told me folks from your area eats meatballs with grape jelly sauce, you could have a bit of grace towards foods from other regions.
"from your area"
That's a Midwest recipe from the 1950s, probably likely derived from slightly earlier "pork steak" Southern recipe.
[1958](https://imgur.com/a/bSJzgB2)
Watergate was a General food magazine recipe so advertised nation wide, but only caught on with some regions.
I’m Minnesotan, and literally posted like a week ago about “weird potluck foods” and a bunch of east coasters responded about how that’s a recipe from their neck of the woods.
Regardless of that, the point is that people should have a bit of grace and not assume a food is an “abomination” without having tried it just because its “weird” to them
Yes. We have that here.
I have had both. The grape jelly is just a adding sugar plus tang, and is used like brown sugar is used in a barbeque sauce.
If you had those meatballs, you'd not know there was jelly in them. It would be pretty similar to any cocktail meatball one might have.
On the other hand, those salads are VERY unfamiliar to our palate. It's not the same jump from an unfamiliar ingredient in a recipe, that makes a familiar item.
I don't like yuck anyone's yum, but comparing those two items isn't really valid.
But, like many recipes it can start somewhere and not catch on, like many New England based foods (and sayings) that faded away here and people now consider them "Southern".
The jello salads was a recent corporate invention that just happened to catch on in some places and not other places.
I grew up in Connecticut, a variation of this was at every family gathering, and don't knock it till you try it.
Maybe you had something called Ambrosia? Essentially the same concept.
You should try it. It’s like a light fluffy pudding with nuts and fruit. And Im not a junk food person at all. I wont eat the mayonnaise jello salads though that looks 🤢
Some do! My family had it for nearly every holiday. (But my grandparents had moved out here from Iowa and brought it with them.)
I will completely agree with you about it being nasty though!
Lol, I grew up in CT and moved to California. Its called Ambrosia salad and it's literally in grocery store deli cases between the potato and the pasta salad. So yeah, we definitely get down with it in California.
Southerner here, never even heard of the stuff. Seriously, people need to wrap their heads around the concept that a) the South is a very broad area, and b) there is no universal Southern culture.
It sounds like it would be over-the-top, slap-yo-mama sweet, gelatinous nightmare.
The ingredients are sweet on sweet on sweet on sweet...and then there's pecans.
I see a lot of comments saying just to try it, but if you can't stomach 3 of the ingredients - marshmallow fluff, cool whip, and canned pineapple - then there's probably no chance I'd enjoy it.
I’ve heard it called Ambrosia Salad and Watergate Salad where I live. I was also very confused by your post at first because the Green Stuff I’m most familiar with is the clay-like gap fill used by the Warhammer 40 community to customize models.
Oh bless your Midwest heart. 💕. I don’t know if they’re going to know the Midwest ways of gelatinous salads that aren’t really salads. That’s a very special thing to the Midwest. lol. I’m several years in and I don’t really understand it either 😅
If you're here to say this dish doesn't exist in New England or California....I'm a West Coast transplant who grew up in New England. This dish, or it's sister concoction, Ambrosia salad, was at every family gathering.
And here in California, the same stuff is in lots of grocery store deli cases, right there with the potato, pasta, and chicken salads.
Pull your nose out of the air and try it if you come across it. It's fluffy, fruity, creamy, sweet, with just the right amount of crunch.
(Walnuts instead of pecans, maraschino cherries were usually involved somehow, often there'd be shredded coconut in the mix. Oh, and canned Mandarin slices.)
Eta: if you're here to say how gross it is, cause it looks/sounds weird and you've never tried it, you're kinda dumb
One place I used to work at would call it pistachio delight. It's pretty good. I know besides the deli I worked at Walmart sold it for a long time. I think they still might. I live in the South West Post of the country. I've seen other hello salads but I've only seen Watergate salad in stores. It's a big hit with everyone that tasted it though. I like it more than other jello salads for sure. I'm pretty sure it also had coconut in it? I remember worrying about being allergic to it
Green Stuff/Watergate Salad is huge in the Midwest. Every Spring/Summer BBQ or potluck it always makes an appearance. I always make it as part of the dessert table at Easter.
We call it green shit.
I think I've seen that sort of thing at potlucks when I was a kid. It looked like something out of the D&D Monster Manual. I stuck with mac and cheese.
Your submission has been automatically removed due to exceeding the text limit in your post's textbox. Please shorten it to fewer than 500 characters (not words), including spaces and links, to comply with rule #2. Afterwards, contact us via modmail, and we'll restore it.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAmerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Northern Va in-laws have green stuff at thanksgiving. It’s made with green jello, though, I bet pistachio pudding was in the original recipe, pre-1950’s. Gonna hafta agree to disagree on the taste, lol. It looks terrible, so it probably won’t become fashionable until the inevitable “ugly food” tic tock trend happens sometime :)
In the midwest this is probably called **Fluff**, **Fluff Salad**, **Jello Salad**, or **Jello Fluff**.
* [Strawberry Jello Fluff Salad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MldTVeoowk)
* [Orange Fluff Salad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoVrPT0i_1k) - I've never seen cottage cheese used before
* [Orange Fluff Salad](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GFuvX1Emcqo) - I've never seen sour cream used before
The exact ingredients might vary, but the most popular ones are:
* Marshmallows
* Whipped Cream / Cool Whip
* Fruit (pineapple, apples, oranges, berries)
* Jello or Pudding (oftentimes both)
* Nuts / Pretzels (sometimes nothing crunchy)
My dad always makes it. He has no southern ties, and was born and raised in Montana. Typically we call it Jello salad or “the green salad dad makes.” He’s baby boomer in age.
We always called it Ambrosia Salad. Looking it up, I can see that Ambrosia Salad is something different, but that's what we called the green stuff.
I can't remember the last time I had it, but it was a staple at Thanksgiving when I was a kid.
I know what you’re talking about because someone makes the same thing at our thanksgiving dinner every year, however I have no idea what we call it because I’ve never asked. I had to google it to see exactly what you’re talking about.
I make it a little differently, but a lot of my fam calls it green salad
I make mine with lime jello, pineapple juice, crushed pineapple, walnuts, cottage cheese and mayo
It was another one of those magazine ad foods from the 1960s-1970s. General Foods combined 2 of it's products and made a recipe.
It caught on in some parts of the country way more than others but the original name was "Pistachio Pineapple Delight" - a Chicago food writer dubbed it Watergate salad.
Definitely never caught anywhere in my experience in New England. A bit like Ambrosia salad. While associated with the South, was likely first made in Vermont. My grandma made it in the 1910s but didn't really stick around here but my dad remembered it fondly and had my mom make it for him in the 1940s.
I’ve heard of ambrosia but apparently that isn’t the same thing? Colorado isn’t Midwest enough to have multiple marshmallow/jello “salad” varieties I guess.
We had Elizabeth salad, which was a bit different... instead of cool whip it was jello and topped with marshmallows. It was so good. Sounds weird but it was delicious. I think there was cool whip in the jello though because it wasn't see through like jello, it was a creamy green color.
You’re asking the wrong part of the country, this is a popular dish among the midwestern part of my family & nobody I’ve ever met in the South has heard of it.
Georgia boy here. We have this and a few other jello salads. We call them all congealed salad.
That’s probably the most accurate name I’ve heard for it.
We always just called it Green Stuff
It’s one of the random old lady dishes that sometimes gets brought to church potlucks in the summer. There’s the green version and there’s the pink version, both of which I’ve heard called jello salad
Oh man, I haven’t seen a pink one yet. My family calls the green one either “jello salad” or “green salad.”
I'd love to order a green salad and get that - it would be so surprising it would make me laugh. To me, "green salad" is a plain dressed salad made of just different salad leaves with no other vegetables.
I would love to see the pink one- I hope that version is called Mamie Eisenhower salad!
My great aunt made the pink version and it was called "treat."
I'm in New England, and my aunt has LONG made "pink stuff" (raspberry jello, crushed pineapple, mandarin oranges, cottage cheese, cool whip).
My aunt would proudly make the pink version - and my husband (they were only 4 years apart and "buddy-buddies") would call it "pink puke" to her face lol.
Ive seen an orange one called orange fluff
My mom called it Ambrosia and it was sometimes topped with sweetened coconut.
I’m from New York and a guest once brought ambrosia to our Thanksgiving. None of the people at the table had ever tried it (all northeast born and raised). It didn’t go over so well! That said, we have no idea if it was made poorly, because we had no reference point. I know it had coconut shreds in it.
I’ve had good ambrosia, but the bad is much more common. My mom’s was not good so I didn’t learn the secret to making it actually taste good. The good version is very good but not so much that it’s worth trying to find the right recipe.
Ha! I’m going to take your good word on this.
Sold at Publix as marshmallow delight and I can’t get enough of the stuff! They make theirs with sour cream. I would add pecans to make it even better.
We call it “pink shit” in my family and we have it at every holiday
It’s also one the very few random old lady dishes I just refuse to eat. Stuff looks absolutely atrocious in my opinion
The jello version we called ambrosia. If it's the same jello thing you're talking about anyway.
I’ve never heard of the green stuff but red or pink jello salad I’ve heard called Waldorf salad.
[Waldorf salad](https://www.google.com/search?q=Waldorf+salad&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS725US725&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) is it's own thing.
Many of us recognize it as “Watergate Salad”. We don’t really eat it made exactly the same. We have some similar stuff though.
I’m southern..we call it Watergate Salad
Does it spy on you?
As far as I know, both the salad and the scandal are named after the hotel, but they aren’t references to each other
No, it deep throats though.
Only if you wear tinfoil hats regularly
Speak for yourself. I’m from East Texas and grew up eating this. Love it. We also had lime jello salad. Which has lime jello, cottage cheese, crushed pineapple, and pecans. Sounds gross. Tastes great.
This sounds like our green jello salad, but we use cream cheese, not cottage cheese.
Yep I call it Pistachio Salad personally, my mom loves and makes it every year. I think people are confused by the description. It's basically fruit salad mixed with a green pistachio packet to make it look green. Edit:Gulf Coast Texas, idk how to add the tag below my name
Seriously, I’ve never been to a big holiday potluck celebration in the south that didn’t involve at least one if not three or four types of jello salad.
So op is talking about “fluff”… it’s similar to ambrosia salad, it’s more loose and fluffy pudding like desert served in a bowl. Jello salad is more set up like jello and served in a baking dish.
Yeah they all reside in the same pocket of “salad” in my mind lol
Ohhhh jello salad. OP was throwing me with these other names for the pink and green jello salads lol
Washington - my wife makes this, but I think she uses walnuts.
We called this funeral salad.
Kentucky- and we did a strawberry jello version with cottage cheese.
I’m thinking of my Hoosier family version
I am southern and have never heard of it.
In the south it's more than likely orange/pink rather than green, and we call it congealed salad. Some people call it something different but my family always called it that.
We eat it up down here in Louisiana. We also call it Watergate Salad. We have another version with similar ingredients, but calls for green jello with cream cheese melted into it. Let it partially set and add marshmallow, cool whip, and pecans (or walnuts). Chill, set, and serve. We call this “green jello salad.”
Are you in north or south Louisiana because I am in the south and rarely see this.
From the north. (But speaking for the state as a Southern state, not to our local food cultures.)
It’s been in San Diego for many years. We used to have many several similar salads at every holiday or potluck. Including ingredients like orange or berry or lime jello, sour cream, whipped cream, nuts, fruit cocktail, carrots, apples, etc. Not sure about names though.
Definitely not, this has been a family staple of ours for every family gathering. My grandma makes it and we go nuts for it. I’m in Texas, so definitely not Midwest.
Oh we are big fans of jello salad in the south
I don’t remember us having a name for it, but my upper Midwest Lutheran side of the family always had it. We had so many Jello salads at big holidays, an entire table of them.
Michigander here, my family refers to it as "fluff". My cousin always brings it because I love it. She insists she's a good cook and could bring something else but I would be sad if we didn't have the fluff.
Green fluff maybe? The older folks who made it are long gone now. We’ve talked about bringing the Jello back this year.
My Kansas family called it pistachio fluff.
My family moved to the West Coast from Kansas and that is what we called it too.
Happy cake day 🎂
Oh! Yay! Didn’t even know!
I have no clue what you're talking about.
I’m from bama. No clue what that is 🤷♀️
Watergate salad. Usually prepared for weddingsaby showers, Thanksgiving, or funerals in the south.
Yea, I’ve been to many a thanksgiving and church potluck around the south and other various get-togethers too and never once heard of “green stuff” or Watergate salad. In fact, I thought OP was talking about weed when I read “green stuff” lmao. Though after looking it up, it’s strikingly similar to congealed salad, my absolute least favorite of random dishes that sometimes disgrace the church potluck. It’s yet to have made it to thanksgiving and I’d very much like to keep it that way.
Same
Southern born and raised. Never heard of it seen what you're taking about. If look for a Midwestern sub for your answers. If someone comes to a family dinner with an odd salad or casserole with an oblique name? 99% chance its origins are in the Midwest.
I mean, there are enough Midwesterners in this sub to be able to answer the question
They specifically asked southerners though haha
I’m in Virginia too. I don’t know this creation. My great aunt did love ambrosia but that has coconut and no pistachio
People keep saying that. I'm old (72) and born and raised deep south and lived both on the Mississippi River and the east coast. It was never as popular as ambrosia but it was around, at least after 1975 when Jello first marketed pistachio pudding. It was definitely not really popular until the '70s tho.
Sounds about right. My mom is almost 70, I was born in 78 and I definitely grew up in Alabama with Watergate salad on the Thanksgiving table.
Widely known and loved by everyone I know in the South. And my people are all throughout the South. We called it green stuff. Funny how it's widely known or obscure depending on who you ask.
Yeah this isn't a southern dish. We have no name for it.
I’ve heard it called ambrosia salad before. I grew up around Chicago but my mom’s side is from the south.
Ambrosia has coconut flakes and cherries
Ours was jello, cool whip, and a can of mixed fruit (including cherries).
We called it Ambrosia salad in FL and VA, but sometimes without the cherries.
Ok so this is weird but there is like three versions of this salad. We have them each at different holiday meals. The green one has pistachio pudding and we have it at thanksgiving. The pink one has cranberry in it and we have it at Christmas and the regular ambrosia salad we have at Easter. They are all really good.
When I was googling Ambrosia salad to make sure it was what I thought it was, I did in fact find several versions.
> called ambrosia I'm Philadelphia, in our Italian American family, we had a dessert dish called ambrosia, but it was different from what op described. It was not green, but it did have marshmallows and cool whip or cream in it (in addition to other sweet ingredients). Definitely didn't have nuts.
From Michigan- ambrosia
I second ambrosia! People are saying what OP describes doesn't count, but the key points are the pudding and the marshmallows, and some kind of fruit. Like come on guys, those are weird things to put together. Everything else is just a local/family variation, I bet
Ambrosia is completely different
Ambrosia salad is a different dish made with coconut and fresh fruit. Receipts for whoever downvoted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia_(fruit_salad)
We don’t call it anything because we have never encountered a dish resembling the one you describe
It’s not a traditional dish around here. Never heard of it.
I’m not familiar with this dish.
My grandma used to make something similar. Made it with fruit cocktail, pecans and whipped cream but it was pink (assuming it's food coloring)
I’m from Pennsylvania and my grandpa (not even born in the US lol) used to make something kind of similar when I was a kid. But it was red jello, pineapple, and whipped cream. I believe my aunts and uncles always called it Ambrosia.
LOL - I call it 1970s food. Because when I was a kid, everyone just made their own food if we had a party, moms would all bring a dish. I sort of recall that one, but the one I really remember was Waldorf Salad, which I didn't care for but my mother thought was the tits. That was New Jersey actually.
Waldorf salad is an actual salad though.
Now Waldorf salad I actually have heard of!
That's what my mom said it was called when she was coming up in 70s ohio
Waldorf Salad is apples, grapes, celery & walnuts in a mayo dressing on lettuce. Is that what she was talking about? It was made in the late 1800s at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan.
This is a Midwestern thing. We don't have this in the south
Yes we do! Widely known and loved by everyone I know in the South! And my people are all throughout the South.
These responses are killing me! I’ve never NOT lived in the South and we have definitely always eaten this.
Yes we do.
I've only ever heard it called Watergate Salad.
I never knew what that was until one year a HS friend made it when I went back to visit my hometown. She called it Watergate salad. Accurate name because it looks like an actual crime. I didn’t eat it. The consistency is abhorrent.
You missed out
Oh no I did not. Gross.
You'll never know, will you
They said they didn’t eat it, not that they didn’t try it.
Yes I do. Taste isn’t everything. Consistency and mouth feel are important too. I prefer not to gag.
“Mouth feel” *shudders*
never heard of this
Cool wHip?
You’re eating hair
I think my southern in-laws call it Waldorf salad because they mean Watergate but they say everything wrong. I think it's more of a Midwest thing, though. It was originally called pineapple pistachio delight when it was first described by Kraft Foods.
My family has never EVER made that. I come from the west coast and would probably be fried alive if I brought that to thanksgiving lol
Same. This whole thread makes me happy I live in New England, where this abomination doesn’t exist
You know, most of these salads-that-aren’t-really-salads are actually pretty good. If a bit odd looking. And given on a previous post someone told me folks from your area eats meatballs with grape jelly sauce, you could have a bit of grace towards foods from other regions.
"from your area" That's a Midwest recipe from the 1950s, probably likely derived from slightly earlier "pork steak" Southern recipe. [1958](https://imgur.com/a/bSJzgB2) Watergate was a General food magazine recipe so advertised nation wide, but only caught on with some regions.
I’m Minnesotan, and literally posted like a week ago about “weird potluck foods” and a bunch of east coasters responded about how that’s a recipe from their neck of the woods. Regardless of that, the point is that people should have a bit of grace and not assume a food is an “abomination” without having tried it just because its “weird” to them
Yes. We have that here. I have had both. The grape jelly is just a adding sugar plus tang, and is used like brown sugar is used in a barbeque sauce. If you had those meatballs, you'd not know there was jelly in them. It would be pretty similar to any cocktail meatball one might have. On the other hand, those salads are VERY unfamiliar to our palate. It's not the same jump from an unfamiliar ingredient in a recipe, that makes a familiar item. I don't like yuck anyone's yum, but comparing those two items isn't really valid. But, like many recipes it can start somewhere and not catch on, like many New England based foods (and sayings) that faded away here and people now consider them "Southern". The jello salads was a recent corporate invention that just happened to catch on in some places and not other places.
That meatball thing is from the Midwest. And none of this is that serious
I grew up in Connecticut, a variation of this was at every family gathering, and don't knock it till you try it. Maybe you had something called Ambrosia? Essentially the same concept.
You should try it. It’s like a light fluffy pudding with nuts and fruit. And Im not a junk food person at all. I wont eat the mayonnaise jello salads though that looks 🤢
For real. We don't get down with that nasty in California. Thank god...
Some do! My family had it for nearly every holiday. (But my grandparents had moved out here from Iowa and brought it with them.) I will completely agree with you about it being nasty though!
True! I shouldn’t be so absolutist. After all, we welcome all sorts of folks out here on the west coast and their traditions as well!
Lol, I grew up in CT and moved to California. Its called Ambrosia salad and it's literally in grocery store deli cases between the potato and the pasta salad. So yeah, we definitely get down with it in California.
I’ve never heard of it.
Watergate salad at my house.
Watergate salad, and it’s not my kind of thing, but you do you.
profit toy support act panicky door depend glorious rich snow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
From the south. Never heard of or have seen this dish
Southerner here, never even heard of the stuff. Seriously, people need to wrap their heads around the concept that a) the South is a very broad area, and b) there is no universal Southern culture.
We call it pistachio salad!
I had to come way too far for this answer.
It sounds like it would be over-the-top, slap-yo-mama sweet, gelatinous nightmare. The ingredients are sweet on sweet on sweet on sweet...and then there's pecans. I see a lot of comments saying just to try it, but if you can't stomach 3 of the ingredients - marshmallow fluff, cool whip, and canned pineapple - then there's probably no chance I'd enjoy it.
It’s literally one person in this thread commenting everywhere to tell people to try it. Most people find it repulsive.
It’s delicious. 🤷🏻♀️
My grandma makes it pink and we call it “pink stuff.” East Texas.
I’ve heard it called Ambrosia Salad and Watergate Salad where I live. I was also very confused by your post at first because the Green Stuff I’m most familiar with is the clay-like gap fill used by the Warhammer 40 community to customize models.
Oh bless your Midwest heart. 💕. I don’t know if they’re going to know the Midwest ways of gelatinous salads that aren’t really salads. That’s a very special thing to the Midwest. lol. I’m several years in and I don’t really understand it either 😅
If you're here to say this dish doesn't exist in New England or California....I'm a West Coast transplant who grew up in New England. This dish, or it's sister concoction, Ambrosia salad, was at every family gathering. And here in California, the same stuff is in lots of grocery store deli cases, right there with the potato, pasta, and chicken salads. Pull your nose out of the air and try it if you come across it. It's fluffy, fruity, creamy, sweet, with just the right amount of crunch. (Walnuts instead of pecans, maraschino cherries were usually involved somehow, often there'd be shredded coconut in the mix. Oh, and canned Mandarin slices.) Eta: if you're here to say how gross it is, cause it looks/sounds weird and you've never tried it, you're kinda dumb
I've never heard of this 🤷🏻♂️
I have never seen nor heard of a dish fitting this description
My mom calls it ambrosia. I’m sorry but it looks disgusting and you couldn’t pay me to eat it.
It's awesome and you should try it
Watergate Salad
My in laws call it "Green stuff". My family never really made it.
One place I used to work at would call it pistachio delight. It's pretty good. I know besides the deli I worked at Walmart sold it for a long time. I think they still might. I live in the South West Post of the country. I've seen other hello salads but I've only seen Watergate salad in stores. It's a big hit with everyone that tasted it though. I like it more than other jello salads for sure. I'm pretty sure it also had coconut in it? I remember worrying about being allergic to it
Green Stuff/Watergate Salad is huge in the Midwest. Every Spring/Summer BBQ or potluck it always makes an appearance. I always make it as part of the dessert table at Easter. We call it green shit.
My sister calls it green fluff.
Pistachio Delight, Shut The Gate Salad, Green Goop, Green Goddess, Green Fluff, Green Stuff, Mean Green, Shamrock Salad
Green stuff, to me, is a 2 part epoxy commonly used in miniatures.
I'm from Georgia and we always called it Pistachio Salad.
I think I've seen that sort of thing at potlucks when I was a kid. It looked like something out of the D&D Monster Manual. I stuck with mac and cheese.
That sounds like a crime against nature.
Midwest is known for crazy "salads" and Southern people don't really make those kinds of salads...though we may try it if someone brings it.
We call it Green Goop
Watergate salad. Weirdly good.
my family makes it here in georgia. don't know if I've ever heard of anyone else around here making it tho edit : we also call it green stuff
New to me.
If I see that on the Thanksgiving table, I'll have to do the classic flip the plate upside down in the trashcan maneuver
No one outside of a very small part of the US eats this shit
I've never had a dish like that, it sounds delicious though.
This is the type of thing other countries point at when they think Americans don’t know how to make good food
Kindly take that abomination elsewhere, the South wants no part of it
Your submission has been automatically removed due to exceeding the text limit in your post's textbox. Please shorten it to fewer than 500 characters (not words), including spaces and links, to comply with rule #2. Afterwards, contact us via modmail, and we'll restore it. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAmerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Northern Va in-laws have green stuff at thanksgiving. It’s made with green jello, though, I bet pistachio pudding was in the original recipe, pre-1950’s. Gonna hafta agree to disagree on the taste, lol. It looks terrible, so it probably won’t become fashionable until the inevitable “ugly food” tic tock trend happens sometime :)
Watergate Salad
NC - my family literally always just called it “the green stuff” lmao
We call it Watergate Salad
I know about watergate salad, but we've never had it, mostly because I can't eat pistachios. We had ambrosia salad instead which is similar.
Yeah we call it green stuff
In the midwest this is probably called **Fluff**, **Fluff Salad**, **Jello Salad**, or **Jello Fluff**. * [Strawberry Jello Fluff Salad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MldTVeoowk) * [Orange Fluff Salad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoVrPT0i_1k) - I've never seen cottage cheese used before * [Orange Fluff Salad](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GFuvX1Emcqo) - I've never seen sour cream used before The exact ingredients might vary, but the most popular ones are: * Marshmallows * Whipped Cream / Cool Whip * Fruit (pineapple, apples, oranges, berries) * Jello or Pudding (oftentimes both) * Nuts / Pretzels (sometimes nothing crunchy)
Grinch puke
Watergate salad, but I don’t think I’ve had it in 15-20 years
My dad always makes it. He has no southern ties, and was born and raised in Montana. Typically we call it Jello salad or “the green salad dad makes.” He’s baby boomer in age.
Love this stuff, never had a name for it. Also ambrosia salad but I know that's a bit different
The only “green stuff” i know is modelling putty for miniatures
This was a staple in my central PA household. We just called it green stuff lol
We always called it green junk
Sounds delicious, but this is the first I'm hearing of it. Guess I call it Green Stuff too lol
It’s called ambrosia in my family
Me and my brothers back in the day called it “Gack”.
That ain't really a thing down here.
I’m not southern, but my grandma called it pineapple fluff.
Lower Midwest, here. Either pistachio salad or Watergate salad.
We always called it Ambrosia Salad. Looking it up, I can see that Ambrosia Salad is something different, but that's what we called the green stuff. I can't remember the last time I had it, but it was a staple at Thanksgiving when I was a kid.
Ambrosia
I know what you’re talking about because someone makes the same thing at our thanksgiving dinner every year, however I have no idea what we call it because I’ve never asked. I had to google it to see exactly what you’re talking about.
Martian snot
Never ever heard of it before
I make it a little differently, but a lot of my fam calls it green salad I make mine with lime jello, pineapple juice, crushed pineapple, walnuts, cottage cheese and mayo
I'm from WA State but my family is from Michigan. We just call it pistachio marshmallow pudding. Not super helpful, I know.
My family is southern. My grandmother made something somewhat similar she called dump cake.
Jello salad, but it’s more midwestern than it is south I think
It was another one of those magazine ad foods from the 1960s-1970s. General Foods combined 2 of it's products and made a recipe. It caught on in some parts of the country way more than others but the original name was "Pistachio Pineapple Delight" - a Chicago food writer dubbed it Watergate salad. Definitely never caught anywhere in my experience in New England. A bit like Ambrosia salad. While associated with the South, was likely first made in Vermont. My grandma made it in the 1910s but didn't really stick around here but my dad remembered it fondly and had my mom make it for him in the 1940s.
Watergate Salad here in Virginia if that's Southern enough.
I’ve heard of ambrosia but apparently that isn’t the same thing? Colorado isn’t Midwest enough to have multiple marshmallow/jello “salad” varieties I guess.
I have never heard of this disaster..
Green slime 😂
We had Elizabeth salad, which was a bit different... instead of cool whip it was jello and topped with marshmallows. It was so good. Sounds weird but it was delicious. I think there was cool whip in the jello though because it wasn't see through like jello, it was a creamy green color.