How Is Jell-O Made?

Jell-O (also known as Jello) is a gelatin based dessert that was first popularized in 1897.

Jell-O’s Humble Origins

Pearle Bixby Wait and his wife, May, trademarked the name for their creation after patenting it decades earlier. It is now owned by the Kraft Heinz company.

Much like today, when it was first created, it was made with strawberry, raspberry, orange, or lemon flavoring mixed with sugar and gelatin.

How Is Jell-O Made?

Jell-O is made by mixing sugar, granulated gelatin and a flavoring to give the dessert it’s unique flavor.

For Jell-O powder packets that you get at home, the process is relatively simple. The three dry ingredients are mixed together in a giant mixer, which then pours the mixture into a pipeline.

This pipeline fills each bag with the specific weight and cuts as it goes. These packets are then inserted into a cardboard package, sealed and are ready to be shipped.

For pre-made Jell-O products that are ready to eat, this same process is done at a much larger scale since all the wet and dry ingredients must be mixed together on location.

Once separate bags containing thousands of pounds of granulated gelatin, sugar and flavour are mixed together in the mixer, boiling hot water is added to begin the rehydrating process. This is followed by cold water minutes later to cool it down.

After all the ingredients are sufficiently mixed in, this liquid is piped to the moulds where the Jell-O will set.

The moulds subsequently pass through a blast freezer where they reach their ideal temperature and firmness before they are ready to be packaged and shipped.

More than a million packages of Jell-O are said to be sold every single day of the year.