The Original Chex Party Mix

While this the current typical (and very good) recipe for Chex Mix, it is hardly the original. Below is the original Life magazine ad from 1952 (image courtesy of Wikipedia). No Corn Chex, they were not introduced until 1958, nor pretzels and certainly no Cheerios, they are a General Mills product. In 1952 Chex was a Ralston Purina product. I love Chex Mix (home made, the store bought one is awful) I wish I could eat it all the time. Alas, time catches up with all of us and the salt and fat are no-no's now. Still, for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays I make up a batch or two and pig out. My secret pleasure, alright, one of my secret pleasures

Simple and so good! And It must be the original Chex party mix because its the same on posted on my Chex cereal box! I always add an extra tablespoon of worcestershire.

I'm sorry, but there's no way that this is the original recipe for Chex Party Mix. I remember making and eating this in the 1950's, and there was no such thing as bagel chips back then. The recipe back then called for plain old regular Cheerios (of course, there wasn't any other kind then either) instead of bagel chips. I'm not sure of the measurements of the other ingredients, but 6 tbsp. of butter doesn't seem quite enough, nor does 2 tbsp. of Worcestershire sauce. Another thing I was surprised to see was seasoned salt. I don't ever remember seeing that in my mother's pantry, and we made this stuff all the time, so if it was called for in the recipe I'm sure she would have had it on hand. I suspect that the original recipe called for garlic and onion salts instead of powders to compensate, but that one is just a guess. So the butter, Worcestershire sauce, seasoned salt, garlic and onion powders are fairly strong feelings, BUT the bagel chips are an absolute NO, and the plain Cheerios are an absolute YES!

Love this one. Only tweak is I put 1/2 tsp cayanne pepper in also. Less if you don't like spicey.

I was able to make a gluten-free version of this thanks to General Mills making minor changes to some of their Chex cereals to make them gluten-free! I made my own bagel chips using my recipe for bagel chips on this site and I bought gf pretzels. Thank you for posting this recipe.