34 thoughts on “Contemporary Mormon Funeral Food”

1. At my fathers funeral a year ago, the ward provided baked idaho potatoes and ham. Baked potatoes because 1) they were available for little or no cost 2) because the ward fed 125 of us!!! Yummy even though it wasn’t the usual.

2. Somebody once delivered a bag of potatoes to me straight from his Idaho farm. I did not know what potatoes tasted like until then. That does sound yummy — thanks, marva.

3. Last few LDS funerals I attended has (IIRC) baked ham, funeral potatoes, and some form of salad, the first two served hot, all prepared by multiple assigned members. They were both in Colorado, so it wasn’t due to a Utah setting.

4. Thanks, bf. I wonder if different parts of the US, not to say different parts of the world, have different food traditions, or even whether there is still a tradition. That’s one curiosity that prompted this.

5. At my brother’s funeral last October in Cedar City: exactly the same as bfwebster describes in Colorado. I think the drink was some kind of fruit punch.

6. The last funeral I attended was last month for my BIL. My sister has fairly high food standards and the RS providing lunch was presided over by one of my sister’s closest friends.

   Lunch was taco salad using shredded pork, lettuce, cheese, chips, etc. My grandmother’s chocolate sheet cake recipe (with pecans in the icing, thank you very much) was desert. The salads were build your own and they had someone taking a count of those through the line for future planning purposes. (I sent the RS pres a copy of a USDA produced “Cooking for Fifty” cookbook so they wouldn’t have to start from scratch)

   My previous funeral, a year ago, in that same northern Wyoming building, different ward, was baked ham, some kind of potatoes, and a mixed green salad. They may have had the same cake but they skipped the pecans.

7. We used to have ham provided by the ward and various incarnations of funeral potatoes and cakes provided by RS sisters with some other assignments, like bagged green salad and dressing and store-bought rolls. Now with a different RS Pres we don’t have funeral potatoes, just baked ones that people are assigned to cook in advance. We just drink ice water.

   I kinda feel like the baked potatoes took the “fun” out of the “fun”eral. I miss the funeral potatoes.

8. Thanks, all — keep the comments coming.

   STW, the Improvement Era had occasional articles for cooking for large groups. I wonder how long it’s been since that was a feature of Church socials.

9. Always ham here. And chocolate cake. Some of it is German chocolate. There’s a kind of oriental type salad with dry crushed ramen noodles added just before serving that is really good. Probably not real oriental, but it has sesame oil and nuts and is really good. Big tossed salads with lots of assorted dressings. And we really do funeral potatoes, but there is quite a variety. Some with Ritz crackers and some only bread crumbs. Some with tater tots and some with unpeeled spuds. Drinks are done with a table full of 2-liter bottles of pop and a cooler full of water.

10. Two funerals in Utah and one in Colorado were as bfwebster describes: ham, funeral potatoes, and some form of salad. I’m also remembering rolls and ice water.

11. Salt Lake. Ham, funeral potatoes (several slightly different varieties), a wide variety of salads (some more exotic than others), rolls, water, and a couple of kinds of cake for dessert.

    My question–how many people like funeral potatoes?

12. Doesn’t everybody like funeral potatoes? Or is it just that some of us like them so well that we counteract the dislike of the random few?

    I appreciate this input. Even if everybody else who reads this has had the same things mentioned here, I’d still like to hear about it. Thanks!

13. By the Relief Society — Baked chicken, various salads, rolls, assorted desserts. No funeral potatoes (or ham) — ever.

14. My wife attended a relative’s funeral in Utah last year. She remembers several crock pots with homemade soups. She also remembers some fresh salads.

15. Funeral potatoes do taste good, but when you find yourself at yet another funeral of a relative who has died of a heart attack, you sort of look down at your plate and begin to wonder if your family’s/church’s food culture might use some changing. (Hate to be a party pooper, but seriously, so many funerals, and the last one was the youngest uncle of all.)

16. North of Seattle, I’ve seen the ham-funeral-potatoes-bagged-salads most often, but also Subway sandwiches (they cater) and baked potatoes with various toppings. Always,the dessert table groans under the weight; after such stress, we need sugar. Oddly, a Cafe Rio knock off (announced as such) was served last time. Do you know what’s *in* that stuff??

    Deb

17. At a family funeral in Jan in CA we had sandwiches, fresh fruit & veggies and cookies. At my grandma’s funeral 18 months ago in Nevada it was more traditional. Ham (paid for by family), various funeral potatoes, salad, rolls and cake.

18. My previous ward liked to do pre-made/store bought bbq pork for sandwiches for very small funerals, with salad and rolls. Now it’s the traditional ham, funeral potatoes, rolls, and bagged salad. Variety of desserts. In So. Cal.

19. In my WI ward, the norm is ham/potatoes/salad/cookies, specifics of each depending on who from the RS is in charge (we have competing potato recipes). Sometimes it’s more to the family’s requests, like once we had wraps from Costco.

20. Last few funerals I’ve attended, plus a few I didn’t manage to attend due to distance:

    Ham and funeral potatoes and a favorite dessert of the deceased.

    Boxed lunches for a family holding a funeral in one location and burying the deceased four hours away that same day.

    Sandwiches and desserts from a local bakery (Kneaders, I think it’s called). It was a small event.

21. I guess I’m old fashioned…it shouts “I Don’t Care Enough About You To Bother One Bit. I’ll Just Grab A Premade Item And Call It Good Enough.” Not saying a full 7 course meal is required, but take out sandwiches seems tacky tacky to me.

    Except for a sister in law whose funeral potato recipe takes about four hours to assemble, every recipe I’ve seen calls for frozen hash browns and a bowl of easy ingredients. It’s a quick dish to prepare. The idea of a luncheon is to nurture the family of the deceased, to make them feel a valued part of a community, and slinging take out food doesn’t cut it for me.

    However, I Love the idea of a boxed lunch for travelers! That certainly sounds nurturing to me!

    Deb The Opinionated

22. Sorry; my inner editor is asleep. I was referring to funeral potatoes recipe in my above comment.

    Deb The Distracted

23. Oregon – just last week. There was ham, funeral potatoes, rolls, a table of salads (green, pasta, hip kale, jello), and a table of desserts. Desserts, sad to say since they’re so easy to make, were mostly store-bought cookies, cakes, and pies.

24. When my mother died in Las Vegas, we left immediately after the funeral to drive her casket to the Salt Lake Valley. The ward made sack lunches for us which struck me as very thoughtful under the circumstances. But that was 16 years ago. I appreciate all the input into more contemporary arrangements.

25. The last funerals I attended were in Hawaii and lunch was teriyaki chicken, rice (rice is always served in Hawaii, even if the main dish is pasta), and salad. One funeral we helped with, we packed up the hot lunch “plate lunch” style so they could be taken to the cemetery on the other side of the island. I haven’t been to a mainland US funeral in over 10 years, so I can’t comment on those.

26. Fiona, your comment reminded me of a cemetery I visited on Maui. Across the way, among the headstones, a large family sat with hibachi and paper plates, picnicking. We just don’t do that on the mainland, but there was something endearing about including the deceased in the celebration.

    We Americans are not very good about managing death in general.

27. Oregon. Ham and a variation on funeral potatoes, also a green salad, also cupcakes and a variety of cookies. Oh, and bakery rolls.

28. Our RS has started serving macaroni and cheese (the box kind) for the children because it’s something nearly every kid will eat.

29. That’s kindness, in it’s own way.

30. The last funeral in our ward had funeral potatoes and ham with salads and rolls, and cookies for dessert. Usually we have cakes (always he made). The funeral before that one we served Hawaiian haystacks, at the request of the deceased’s husband. It was a nice change, but I love, love, lone funeral potatoes. When my dad died, it was August and I was told no to my request for funeral potatoes; they didn’t do that in the summer. Instead they served us store-bought potato salad. I like potato salad, but only if it’s homemade, although Costco’s isn’t too bad.

31. Not quite what you were looking for, but after my dad’s memorial service, we had a cookie reception, in honor of his love of cookies (at one point in my childhood, he went through a dozen a day–all homemade!).

    At his funeral service in AZ, we had ham, green salad, rolls, and funeral potatoes. The family selected the meal and paid for the food that the ward put together.

32. My ward here in Utah always does ham, rolls, salads, potatoes, cookies/cakes. The ward pays for ham and rolls and asks people to sign up for salads, potatoes, or cake. I live in a ward that has an older demographic so we have at least one funeral a month–last month we had 3 funerals within a ten-day period.

    We just had my mother-in-law’s funeral here in UT and that was the menu also. There were six pans of funeral potatoes on the table and they were all different. It was fun to taste a variety of options. Several family members who were visiting from Hawaii expressed surprise that “funeral potatoes really do exist!” Hawaiian funeral food is usually what you’d have at any large gathering there–meats, rice, sushi, noodles, egg rolls, etc

33. In our wards in Utah, the family supplies the meat and the ward provides the rest of the meal which includes funeral potatoes, salads, rolls, and cake. I heard of a funeral one day that served lasagna.

    My most interesting funeral when I was RS president was for an elderly Tongan grandma.The family brought in cookers full of pork that we needed to pull apart. When it looked like we were going to run out of meat with all of those big descendants, word got out to someone in charge. It wasn’t long before several of those wonderful large men came into the kitchen carrying containers and bags of roast chicken, then they got busy cutting and pulling the meat. When the meal was over, those same angel men started cleaning up the cultural hall and had it all cleaned up and put away before we could get the dishes finished in the kitchen.

34. Speaking of travelling, my ward usually makes sandwiches out of the leftover ham and rolls and sends sack lunches with the people who have a long way to travel home. Then the rest of the food goes in cottage cheese cartons that we all bring to be taken to people in the ward who may need it. Delivering that food was my favorite part of the whole job.

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