Social Distancing: Trying Molly Yeh’s Viral Popcorn Salad Recipe

Online Furor Over Recipe Shows You Don't Knock It 'Till You Try It

A recipe from a Food Network host and chef here in our viewing area went viral last week.

Molly Yeh lives on a farm near the North Dakota, Minnesota border. She hosts the show Girl Meets Farm.
She introduced the world to popcorn salad. Click here for the recipe. Boy, did people react strongly.
A lot of people thought it looked nasty.
But she’s a pretty popular foodie, and the definition of salad is pretty broad around these parts, so I tried out her recipe.

I’ve been doing a bit more cooking during the pandemic, but this was quite a lot of ingredients for me. Lots of chopping peas and celery and shallots.
I’d never popped popcorn in a pan before. That was a lot easier than I expected.
After the chopping and the popping you pretty much mix together the dressing, veggies, then popcorn and toss it like any old salad.
The end result looks like something right at home sitting on the table at a church potluck.
But, how does it taste?

It’s good! The veggies give it a fresh flavor. The popcorn remains crispy. There’s a nice tang in the dressing. I think the shallots really tie the whole thing together. I brought the leftovers for lunch, the next day. The popcorn does lose some of it’s crunch overnight but they flavor still remains.

The lesson, I think, is don’t knock something ’till you try it.
I noticed in the week between this recipe going viral Molly Yeh has set her Twitter account from public to private.
People online can be merciless. I hope it had nothing to do with backlash for the popcorn salad.
She lives in our viewing area so there’s a chance she might see this:

Molly, your salad is really good. I hope you don’t feel bad over the recipe blowing up. Thank you for inspiring me and other people to try something we never would have otherwise.

Tell me what craziness you’re cooking up in the kitchen right now. A viewer sent in her own popcorn salad recipe that calls for a pound of bacon. I think I’ll make that one soon.
Let me know on Facebook and Twitter.