Alyson's Broccoli Salad

Most Helpful Positive Review

Fabulous -- and this from a long-standing broccoli hater! :) Instead of raisins, please use halved seedless red grapes. Have tried both and the grapes are so much better (to us, at least)...in fact, I always add extra. I recommend making this the night before in order for the flavors to meld. You may want to add half the bacon when you make the salad and the rest just before serving so that the salad picks up the bacon flavor but you still get a bit of crunch from the other half of bacon. I use Splenda for the dressing and you can't tell the difference. We did not care for the sunflower seeds. Thanks for the delicious recipe! *UPDATE* Feb 2008 -- Wanted to pass along that I tried using FROZEN baby broccoli florets. Worked great! Bring a pot of water to boil and drop the florets in. Remove as soon as water returns to a boil so the broccoli doesn't lose its crispy texture, then immediately submerge in ice water. Simply just thawing or microwaving for a short time might work even better if you want to retain more crunch. I prefer a little less crunch while hubby likes it very crunchy...I try to find a happy medium. :) If you catch the frozen pkgs when they're buy one get one, could save a little money as well...fresh broccoli can be very expensive. Just be sure to use a quality brand if you try frozen. I used two 1 lb pkgs and made 2x times the dressing (also used extra grapes, onion and bacon). We LOVE this recipe! :-)

What defines taste for this recipe? What can you substitute for what? 1. Keep red onion. Do not substitute it. 2. Keep bacon. You can use more bacon then requested, still be fine. 3. Raisins. I like Jumbo White raisins. Please do not use those little brown once. You need sweet-sour taste. So as previous reviewers said: you can use red grapes, halved; you can use craizins. Sweet-n-Sour! 4. Sunflower seeds or roasted almonds - doesn't matter. They both taste good in this salad. Add them before serving, so they retain cranchinnes. 5. And dressing. For dressing you can substitute Real Mayo for Light or for extra Light or for Sour Cream+Mustard+LemonJuice+Salt. Really does not make any difference. You can substitute sugar for Splenda. You can use Red Wine Vinegar. The taste should be sweet-salty and a little sour. What important is the amount. If you use too little - it'll be too dry. If you use to much - it'll be soup. Add the dressing gradually. Remember that after a night in refrigirator it is going to absorb some fluid. Now - if you do substitutions for Mayo, make sure this thing has salt in it, because if not and you use raisins... they will become grapes again :-), and sometime quite huge grapes.

I have been making this for years, using slightly different amounts of the ingredients. (4 cups broccoli, 1 cup raisins, 1 cup sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup sweet red onion & 8 slices bacon for the salad. For the dressing: 1 cup mayo, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 T. vinegar) My suggestion to those who say the broccoli is too "crunchy": I always mix up all of the salad ingredients the night before I serve this. The bacon "softens" the broccoli. I mix up the dressing ingredients separately, in another bowl, and add a couple of hours before serving to let the flavors blend. And I suggest using "real bacon", but I know we're all busy people. Always delicious...have had so many requests for this salad people pay me to make it for graduations, weddings, etc.