Popcorn Salad Sounds Like a Great Way to Ruin Any Cookout

Social media is no stranger to bizarre and unsavory recipes, but one recipe is so far out that it has been dubbed the “recipe from hell.” Popcorn salad, supposedly a “classic Midwestern” dish, has gone viral for all of the wrong reasons after Food Network’s Molly Yeh shared her recipe for “Crunchy Snap Pea Popcorn Salad” on Facebook.

Initially shared back in February to Food Network’s Facebook account, where they said they are “def going to start adding POPCORN to every single salad now,” and making its way to other social media platforms in recent days, the video shows Yeh mixing up her “riff on an iconic Midwestern dish.” Popcorn salad, according to Yeh, includes “crunchy vegetables, tons of snappy popcorn, and its held together with a mayo-y dressing.” The dish was paired with a homemade salad dressing with mayonnaise, sour cream, cider vinegar, sugar, and Dijon mustard.

“Popcorn salad is one of those classic midwestern dishes that you would often find in a church basement pot luck. And it’s typically made of veggies, popcorn and mayonnaise, I know some people who put fish in theirs. And you think it’s not going to work and then you taste it and it’s really good,” Yeh says in the video. “The texture of the popcorn in the salad is so weirdly good, I just can’t get enough of it. See it looks like you’re going to get a salad, but you look underneath and you see a pile of popcorn. That’s my kind of salad.”

While Yeh says popcorn salad is “so Midwestern, so quirky, and so delicious,” many on the internet would beg to differ. As soon as the video made its way to Twitter, a frenzy erupted as people reacted to the dish, with one person writing, “I really want to know like…how Food Network ended up here.” Another person tweeted, “I’m so sad to see the popcorn salad coming from Molly Yeh, the cutest cooking star in the world. But I cannot protect you from the barbs of Twitter this time, Molly.” A third person said that “If you bring me popcorn salad I’m taking it as a personal threat against me and my ancestors,” with another simply wondering, “I have lots of questions about the popcorn salad, but the one at the forefront is: wouldn’t the mayo dressing make the popcorn soggy as it sits?”

At this time, Yeh has not responded to the newfound interest in the unique recipe. Fans can catch up on more of her culinary adventures on her Food Network series Girl Meets Farm, which finds Yeh cooking up Midwestern dishes that are sometimes influenced by her Jewish and Chinese heritage. Fans can also check out more of her recipes on her Instagram account, where she frequently shares dishes.