your favourite popcorn

[dnjan]

What is your favourite way to make popcorn?

I prefer white popcorn (tastes better than yellow, though it pops up a bit smaller),
cooked in bacon grease. Just a bit of salt, no butter needed.

 

[Bushman]

I'm partial to Centrella microwavable popcorn when I'm feeling cheap, butter content doesn't matter (I buy the buttery popcorn salt). If I want to treat myself, though, I'll stop by Garrett's Popcorn on the way home from downtown Chicago. From them, I like to get the Mix, which is a mixture of their cheese and caramel corn.

 

[Braz]

White popcorn here. Indiana is one of the largest - maybe the largest - popcorn growing states so I have many choices of quality popping corn. I like salt and a bit of butter, though my wife is the salt police and gets snippy if I use too much. Sometimes I'll dust a tad of garlic powder on. I pop on the stovetop with Whirley-Pop cooker.

 

[dnjan]

My wife got me one of those Whirley-poppers a few years ago. Great invention!

Definitely reduces the number of "old maids" as compared to just using a saucepan on the stove and shaking it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In a Gold Medal Big Eye popper, in butter-flavored sunflower oil, with a quarter-cup of Flavacol per 16 ounces of raw Nebraska yellow kernels. (That's the theatre secret.)

 

[MisterCairo]

I've discovered the air popper, no unpopped kernels, and able to add whatever butter, salt, seasoning at hand or that comes to mind!

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've discovered the air popper, no unpopped kernels, and able to add whatever butter, salt, seasoning at hand or that comes to mind!

I typically use an air popper as well, basically out of convenience. But I love that theater style as well. Actually, there's not many types of popcorn I don't like, as I'm kinda crazy for it. Except cheese. I cannot stand cheese flavored popcorn. I don't know why exactly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another theatre secret anyone can use is that fine-milled salt greatly improves the flavor of any popcorn. Table salt crystals are too large to stick effectively to the corn, and you end up using much more than necessary to get a salty taste. Fine-milled popcorn salt from your local food-service supply store will give you much better results with less waste.

If you don't have a food-service supply store in your neighborhood, try running regular salt thru a coffee grinder -- or even grind it up by hand with a mortar and pestle. You want a salt that's more like a powder than like visible crystals.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Another theatre secret anyone can use is that fine-milled salt greatly improves the flavor of any popcorn. Table salt crystals are too large to stick effectively to the corn, and you end up using much more than necessary to get a salty taste. Fine-milled popcorn salt from your local food-service supply store will give you much better results with less waste.

If you don't have a food-service supply store in your neighborhood, try running regular salt thru a coffee grinder -- or even grind it up by hand with a mortar and pestle. You want a salt that's more like a powder than like visible crystals.

I use pickling salt for this reason. It's much finer grained than regular table salt, and it's widely available in the big box for cheap. I've seen stuff labeled "popcorn salt", but it's usually pretty expensive and always looked like a marketing gimmick to me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The stuff we use -- Flavacol -- is basically ultra-fine-milled salt mixed with beta carotene for that distinctive yellow color. It's even finer than pickling salt, to the point where if you spill it it forms a dust cloud.

 

[Fading Fast]

In a Gold Medal Big Eye popper, in butter-flavored sunflower oil, with a quarter-cup of Flavacol per 16 ounces of raw Nebraska yellow kernels. (That's the theatre secret.)

What are your thoughts on the sunflower oil versus real butter? I remember many years ago, some theater chain made a big deal of using only "real" butter. My vague memory was it didn't make a difference - and I thought it would - but it was a long time ago.

 

[LizzieMaine]

No theatre uses "real butter" as in the sense of the stick of butter you have in your refrigerator -- it's impossible to melt such butter and keep it usable in a commercial setting. What you get from a "real butter" pump is actually anhydrous butterfat, which is basically butter with the water extracted. This can be melted in a pump and kept usable without separating or getting disgusting, and technically it's "real butter" in that it doesn't contain any other kind of oils. But it's highly processed and may contain various preservatives and chemical agents designed to prevent it from foaming in the pump.

We used to use a "real butter" anhydrous butterfat product, but people constantly complained that it didn't taste buttery enough. So we switched to a product called "Odell's Supur-Kist NT," which is a combination of soybean oil and a butterfat extract, which tastes like people expect theatre popcorn butter to taste. It's also non-trans-fat, for those who are concerned about such things.

I can't taste the difference myself, other than to think that the Supur-Kist stands up to reheating cycles much better than the "real butter" did.

Incidentally, most of the stick butter you buy in a store contains paraffin wax -- the same stuff as that block of Gulfwax your grandmother used to use to seal the jelly jars. This helps the butter retain its shape when it's out of the refrigerator. So unless you're getting your butter straight from the farm, most people probably have never had 100 percent "real butter" anywhere in their lives.

 

[gear-guy]

We have a home popcorn machine and I use coconut oil, real butter, popcorn salt and whatever kernels the store has. Always yellow though.

 

[swanson_eyes]

Does it count if I like mine made into meal, flattened into disks, and fried in coconut oil with cheese in between? No? (I'm not a fan of popcorn because I've had to scoop aproximately 18547487504983508 bags of it at this point. But I do like corn overall.)

 

[gear-guy]

So unless you're getting your butter straight from the farm, most people probably have never had 100 percent "real butter" anywhere in their lives.

True but come to Indiana and get all you want. When you live around the Amish $4 will buy you a quart tub. Better than making your own.

 

[dnjan]

Another theatre secret anyone can use is that fine-milled salt greatly improves the flavor of any popcorn. Table salt crystals are too large to stick effectively to the corn, and you end up using much more than necessary to get a salty taste. Fine-milled popcorn salt from your local food-service supply store will give you much better results with less waste.

If you don't have a food-service supply store in your neighborhood, try running regular salt thru a coffee grinder -- or even grind it up by hand with a mortar and pestle. You want a salt that's more like a powder than like visible crystals.

Thanks for this suggestion!

 

[ChiTownScion]

White popcorn here. Indiana is one of the largest - maybe the largest - popcorn growing states so I have many choices of quality popping corn. I like salt and a bit of butter, though my wife is the salt police and gets snippy if I use too much. Sometimes I'll dust a tad of garlic powder on. I pop on the stovetop with Whirley-Pop cooker.
View attachment 40801

My wife got an electric popper from Santa... but I will give up my Whirley Pop when they pry it from my cold, stiff hand.

 

[dnjan]

Powdered some salt with the mortar and pestle while the bacon grease was melting in the popper.
Interesting effect. Hard to describe - more even? anyway, I like it!
Will be powdering salt while the bacon grease melts in future batches.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have a home popcorn machine and I use coconut oil, real butter, popcorn salt and whatever kernels the store has. Always yellow though.

We used coconut oil for a while, and it did give a superior flavor. Unfortunately, it also gummed up the oil pump on on our popper -- it gets cold in the theatre overnight, and we don't have an oil warmer system, so the oil in the lines would solidify. Took most of the day to thaw it out enough to be ready for the evening show. After three months of that, I went back to sunflower oil.

 

[Trenchfriend]

By the way:
Sunflower oil and a q-tip is a good thing to your nose, on overheated, dry air-rooms on wintertime. Works. Simple home-remedy.