I know the drill. You’ve got a bunch of 4th of July BBQs to attend, and you want to bring something that will really wow people because you want to distract everyone from your lack of a summer body/want to impress Brad/I don’t really care why tbh. Well, I’ve got something that will be sure to impress (and get you wasted): red, white, and blue Jell-O shots. It’s what our founding fathers would have wanted.
Brace yourselves: this post is long. Mostly because I don’t have faith in anybody to not fuck this up.
Ingredients
- 3 boxes of Jell-O: 1 blue raspberry, 1 of any red flavor (cherry, strawberry, raspberry, IDGAF), and 1 clear* (more boxes if you want to make more than, like, 30 shots in total. Warning you now: one box of Jell-O doesn’t get you very far. If this is a big party you may want to double the recipe).
- 1 handle of vodka—If you buy the shitty vodka that comes in a plastic bottle, PEOPLE CAN TELL. No need to ball out, though—stick with Smirnoff and you’ll be fine.
- 3 juices that correspond to each different color of Jell-O that you bought, i.e., blue V8 for the blue, red fruit punch for the red, and just like, Sprite or some shit for the clear. IDK, something clear and somewhat flavorful. The clear ones are going to come out rough—deal with it. Note: DO NOT USE HAWAIIAN PUNCH. That shit is disgusting. It will botch your Jell-O shots. I would know; I’ve done it before.
- 2 pots *said in the 2Chainz voice* …actually I lied you only really need 1 pot; I just wanted to make that joke.
- Those little Dixie cups kids use to brush their teeth with OR those paper ketchup cups OR disposable shot glasses OR whatever you can find. Basically you just need a small plastic cup-like structure that’s not too rigid or else no one will be able to squeeze the shots into their mouth. Be creative. I’ve used mini cupcake molds in a dire situation. It really doesn’t fucking matter.
*clear Jell-O is hard to find but I promise it exists.
Finding all this shit may be hard, but the good news is making Jell-O is so easy, even a caveman you can do it. I’m prefacing this by saying that these aren’t regular Jell-O shots; they’re good Jell-O shots. I know this because I am honestly kind of famous for these things. I’m sort of an urban legend. But anyway, I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but I’ll tell you my secret.
So when you make regular, non-alcoholic Jell-O, you mix 1 cup of hot water with 1 cup of cold water and then the mix. Easy. Now, most idiots making Jell-O shots just sub out the cold water for their liquor of choice and call it a day. WRONG. That is how your Jell-O shots come out tasting like rubbing alcohol and regret. SO LISTEN TO ME CAREFULLY. For Jell-O shots that will taste delicious and still get you fucked up, you still replace the cold water with the alcohol, but you also REPLACE THE CUP OF HOT WATER WITH ONE CUP OF JUICE.
This is why you can’t be choosing flavors all willy-nilly. You have to put some thought into it. Maybe buy more packets of Jell-O than you need in case you fuck up the flavor profiles. Can you tell I take this way too seriously?
And now I will no longer be invited to parties since I gave away my long sought-after recipe. JK, I’ll still get invited because I’m a fucking good time. But anyway, for those of you who lack the powers of deductive reasoning, here’s your step-by-step guide to making these patriotic Jell-O shots. Please note, these are not for the layered Jell-O shots pictured above, but for red and white and blue ones. As in, separate colors, separate cups. I’ll get to the fancy shit in a sec.
1. Get your pot. Measure 1 cup of juice. Pour into pot. Put it on the stove on low heat, and when that shit starts to boil, stir in your Jell-O mix until it’s dissolved. This should take like, 2 minutes (btw this is all on the box in case you forget).
2. Once it’s dissolved, remove the pot from heat. Measure your 1 cup of vodka and pour it in the Jell-O/juice mix. Stir.
3. Pour that shit into your cups. Put it all in the fridge. Wait like, 5 hours.
4. Rinse and repeat (like literally rinse the pot) 2 more times.
TA-DA!
If you want to get really fancy, you can do three-layered Jell-O shots, like so:
It’s the same as above, only when you pour the first layer of mix into the cups, only fill it like 1/3 of the way, fucking duh. Then—and this is the important part—you need to wait for each individual layer to solidify a little before you pour the next layer on top of it, which—double important part—NEEDS TO BE COOL. NOT HOT. Basically, if you try to pour hot Jell-O over not-gelled-Jell-O, instead of a nice layering effect, everything will all melt and mix together and you’ll have a gross brown (or purple?) mixture. Ew.
I can feel that I just overcomplicated things. Know what? Let’s leave the layering to the professionals. Aka, me.
