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What is 'hand salad' and why is everyone freaking out about it?

Bon Appetit magazine tried to name something 'hand salad', and people aren't having it
/ Source: TODAY

For some reason, Bon Appétit magazine thought it would be a good idea to call a recipe for dip and veggies a "hand salad" — and, unsurprisingly, the internet is not having it.

This could potentially be the biggest food controversy since 2015's great pea guacamole debate.

Included in a menu for how to throw a chill Sunday dinner party for less than $40, the recipe calls for romaine lettuce leaves to be arranged in a bowl alongside a yogurt-lemon dressing for dipping. That's all hunky dory in our book — until they decided to go and call that lettuce arrangement "hand salad."

Listen, we understand that "finger food" — i.e. sliders and wings — is a thing, but for some reason, "hand salad" evokes an image of a salad literally made out of hands.

This guy gets it:

In the recipe, BA says that they called this creation a hand salad "because lettuce and dip just doesn’t sound like nearly as much fun." Right, but crudités also sounds fun and fancy (read: French) and also, you know, accurate.

People on Twitter, of course, were quick to call them out:

Some people were downright angry:

Others took it to have more of an inappropriate meaning:

And some offered up their own creative "hand" recipes:

As wise man George Costanza once said on Seinfeld, "You know, the tomato never took off as a hand fruit." And we're pretty sure this bare-bones crudités platter, while likely delicious, won't take off as a hand salad.

To be fair, this isn't the first hand salad that the magazine's run. There's a recipe for one from 2016, but at least the romaine leaves were served as hors d'oeuvres pre-dipped in dressing, sprinkled with a little garnish on top.

Anyway, if you're craving crudités the way we are now, learn how to make the most beautiful platter possible: