Popcorn!

[TastyReuben]

One thing that rarely comes up here is also one of our favorite snacks...popcorn! 🍿

I made popcorn last night:

I've found those two products, plus adding a good dollop of butter along the way, get me extremely close to duplicating moviehouse popcorn, both in taste and look (that weird yellowish-orange).

We have popcorn three or four times a week, and that's the popcorn I make probably 75% of the time. Other times, I make kettle corn (a mix of sweet and salty) or some kind of savory herbed popcorn.

I've also made caramel corn and I've attempted cheese popcorn, but it never comes out very well. My mom made popcorn balls a lot when I was a kid, held together with Karo syrup.

I've used just about every apparatus and method for popping corn, except for an air popper, because I know how bad that stuff tastes. After year and years of experimenting, I settled on a heavy saucepan and the stovetop.

What about you? Do you like popcorn? Do you pop it at home, or just buy the already-popped stuff in bags?

What's your favorite flavor? What's your preferred method of popping - stovetop?...electric popper?...microwave?...air popped?

 

[Morning Glory]

What about you? Do you like popcorn? Do you pop it at home, or just buy the already-popped stuff in bags?

Not really something I cook very often. I quite like savoury popcorn but its not something I think of having. I don't really do snacks, I suppose. When I've cooked it, mainly for kids when they were young, I used the microwave.

 

[rascal]

We have butter and plain packet popcorn. Microwave.
We always have 3 or 4 in the pantry for grandkids. They love it, I sprinkle icing sugar on it. They all have their own "cartons" that imitate real ones.
Neither my wife or I are fans.

Russ

 

[NailBat]

All the time! I just pop it on the stove in a little oil, nothing fancier needed.

If you want to get fancy though, try popping it in clarified butter instead of oil.

 

[TastyReuben]

All the time! I just pop it on the stove in a little oil, nothing fancier needed.

If you want to get fancy though, try popping it in clarified butter instead of oil.

I throw butter in just before it starts popping, and it comes out with a brown butter taste.

 

[Backbay]

One thing that rarely comes up here is also one of our favorite snacks...popcorn! 🍿

I made popcorn last night:

View attachment 75929

I've found those two products, plus adding a good dollop of butter along the way, get me extremely close to duplicating moviehouse popcorn, both in taste and look (that weird yellowish-orange).

We have popcorn three or four times a week, and that's the popcorn I make probably 75% of the time. Other times, I make kettle corn (a mix of sweet and salty) or some kind of savory herbed popcorn.

I've also made caramel corn and I've attempted cheese popcorn, but it never comes out very well. My mom made popcorn balls a lot when I was a kid, held together with Karo syrup.

I've used just about every apparatus and method for popping corn, except for an air popper, because I know how bad that stuff tastes. After year and years of experimenting, I settled on a heavy saucepan and the stovetop.

What about you? Do you like popcorn? Do you pop it at home, or just buy the already-popped stuff in bags?

What's your favorite flavor? What's your preferred method of popping - stovetop?...electric popper?...microwave?...air popped?

Popcorn made on the stovetop is the best. We use the coconut oil also. For Kettlecorn I cheat and use Orville Redenbachers (spelling?) microwave.

My Dad always made popcorn for us as kids, I still have the kettle he popped it in .. sentimental ...

 

[TastyReuben]

My Dad always made popcorn for us as kids, I still have the kettle he popped it in .. sentimental ...

When I was very small (5 and younger), I vaguely remember my mom making it in the fireplace in a pan with a long handle.

After we moved, she used to make it on the stove, until one day, my dad brought home an electric popper, one of those with the plastic top that served as the bowl as well.

That thing was horrible. First, it had a receptacle in the top for holding butter, the idea being that the butter would slowly melt while the popcorn was popping.

Well, in reality, about half of it melted, and the other half just stayed up there, doing no good.

Second, the top was meant to be a serving bowl as well, right? Remember that unmelted butter? Yup, turn the bowl over, set it in your lap, and five minutes later, feel that leftover butter give you a big grease stain right over your thingamajig. Nice...

Once I moved out, I got a Stir Crazy popper. Same crap design as that thing we had from the '70's (including the badly designed butter holder), but with the addition of a little metal sweeper that ran around the bottom of the popper, automatically stirring the kernels while it popped.

I think I burned through about five of those over the years.

We did occasionally have microwave popcorn, the little bags, but the smell and taste was so bad, plus the fact that it took three bags to equal a movie night's worth of popcorn, we stopped using those.

That led to the WhirleyPop, which advertises itself as the last popcorn maker you'll ever need, "it'll last a lifetime!"

Nope. We went through one every couple of years, we used them so much. That's what led me back to just popping in a saucepan on the stove.