Snickers Salad: Is It A Salad? Or Is It A Dessert?

Snickers Salad. Snickers Salad? Whoa! Yes, you read that correctly. Generally speaking, it pairs chopped apples with one of the world's most famous candy bars, which has been chopped up and thrown into the mix, along with Cool Whip and vanilla instant pudding. But if you said to yourself, "Snickers Salad – that's an oxymoron, if ever there was one,” you wouldn't be the first. And if you said, "Snickers Salad! That sounds like my kind of salad,” you also wouldn't be the only one. Far from it.

A viral video that shined the light on Snickers Salad helped to make That Midwestern Mom (@thatmidwesternmom) a TikTok sensation. It's one of the campy TikToker's favorite "Minnesota salads that aren't really salads.” She doesn't call Snickers Salad a dessert, outright, but she does note how you tell the difference between her potato salad and her Snickers Salad at the school potluck: The Snickers Salad has chopped peanuts and a drizzle of caramel sauce on top. "It is WILD to me as an Australian what you call salads in the U.S.,” one TikToker commented.

YouTuber Eric Neznik, "The Hungry Cowboy,” introduced Snickers Salad to his viewers some years back, noting that most folks probably don't think of candy bars when they think of salads. "And that's why it's good to turn conventional wisdom on its head from time to time,” he writes in his video description. So should we toss the "salad" part of the name or keep it?

If you were born and raised in the American heartland, you probably learned at an early age that the peanut-y, caramel-y Snickers bar is indeed a salad ingredient (per Atlas Obscura). Or, more accurately, a "dessert salad” ingredient. In the Midwest and Western states, dessert salads "make up an entire segment of American cuisine,” according to the Matador Network. These salads, with ingredients like cream cheese, cookies, Jello-O, canned fruit, and mini marshmallows – and no nutrient-rich greens – are welcome take-alongs for holidays and other occasions. If you're from the East Coast or West Coast and want to "eat like a Midwesterner,” know that the salad course might be served last and will satisfy your sweet tooth (per Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau).

In some quarters, Snickers Salad is considered a summer side dish (per The Spruce Eats) and might contain a boost of extra fruit in the form of halved red grapes. Some years back, The New York Times asked Google's researchers for an analysis of the distinct dishes most often searched for leading up to Thanksgiving. Snicker (sic) Salad was "unusually popular” in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Iowa (where it's called Snicker Apple Salad). Move over pumpkin pie. Or green bean casserole.