Popcorn help please

[peeplj]

Ok, folks, let's say I have a strong desire...nay, even a craving...to make some very much unhealthy, far-too-buttery, high-quality guaranteed-to-raise-your-blood-pressure popcorn.

What's your favorite way of turning out really really excellent popcorn? Yeah, I like microwave popcorn too, but I've really got a hankerin for the "good stuff."

Thanks from the bottom of my stomach,

--James

[Nanohedron]

In addition to unbelievable amounts of melted butter: grated Romano cheese. It smells...well...the taste is addictive, anyway.

[dwinterfield]

Ok, folks, let's say I have a strong desire...nay, even a craving...to make some very much unhealthy, far-too-buttery, high-quality guaranteed-to-raise-your-blood-pressure popcorn.

What's your favorite way of turning out really really excellent popcorn? Yeah, I like microwave popcorn too, but I've really got a hankerin for the "good stuff."

Thanks from the bottom of my stomach,

--James

medium size sauce pan with lid - plenty of oil (not olive oil) - high temperature - add the popcorn and start shaking the pan back and forth on the burner - don't stop till you're done. get it out of the pan right away - butter and salt to taste - don't look back.

[IrishLass]

For microwave popcorn, I like Pop Secret Homestyle - it tastes just like the stuff my Dad used to make on the stove with a skillet when I was a kid. yummm....

[IRTradRU?]

medium size sauce pan with lid - plenty of oil (not olive oil) - high temperature - add the popcorn and start shaking the pan back and forth on the burner - don't stop till you're done. get it out of the pan right away - butter and salt to taste - don't look back.

Mmmmm.... kettle corn! My Mom had this recipe (as above) down to perfection.

AUUGHGHGHHGGH....

[carrie]

Well this may sound heretical, but just lately, because I accidentally ordered the wrong kind of popcorn from Peapod (online grocery shopping and delivery), I have been making popcorn with a very small amount of oil, like a teaspoon, and the Orville Redenbacher bottled kernels, just the plain kernels. We don't salt it, we don't butter it, and even my kids, who always get buttered popcorn at the movies, just love it. Don't knock it until you've tried it. You'd be surprised how good the flavor of just the popcorn is. (<-lousy sentence)

Just had some, in fact!

Carol

[IRTradRU?]

The only amount of oil really needed is enough to coat each kernel.

My Mom used to pour into a measuring cup the amount of corn she wanted (1/3 cup was usually plenty for about 3-4 people) and then pour the oil into the cup - maybe about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way, while the kernels were in the cup. Then she'd dump the contents into the pan and start to heating it up.

[jen f]

I just had some popcorn before coming in here to check the board! I don't have it that often, but I just had a craving this afternoon. Must be a popcorn day all around.

One thing I haven't figured out is how to get the melted butter distributed evenly. No matter how quickly I toss the popcorn with the butter, I have soggy spots. That's why I usually just salt mine, which is pretty good, but I'd like to know the butter secret. Any hints?

[ChrisA]

To properly butter popcorn you need some kind of gravy-cup or measuring-cup that has
a little spout on the side, or a really steady hand with a regular cup, and you need a
-huge- bowl. No, a bigger bowl than that. Bigger. Is that the best you can do? Okay,
well, all right. Anyway, you've got your bowl that's like, 3 times bigger than the one you're
going to eat the popcorn from, and you've got your cup of hot, melted butter, and you
take your bowl and start tossing the popcorn. (This is a good time to add salt if you're
going to... it'll spread more evenly before the butter is involved.) Once you've got a good
rhythm going so the popcorn is rolling bottom to top and top to bottom, -then- you drizzle
your butter in big, slow circles over the top of this huge bowl. A really thin trickle of
butter, right... if you find yourself -pouring- the butter in, just give the drizzling a rest for a
moment (but keep tossing the corn), and then resume with the nice thin trickle. Once the butter
is all drizzled in, then you shake the popcorn back into the eating-size bowl, and try to leave
behind in the ultra-huge bowl any unpopped kernels. Now you have delicious, hot, evenly buttered
popcorn without any nasty unpopped kernels...

The big problem for most people is, usually you want to make the popcorn in the largest
bowl in the house, and you don't -have- a bowl three times bigger! What can I say. Get
ye to a kitchen store and buy a stupendously huge bowl. Also good for soaking arbitrarily
large quantities of vegetables during prep for other kinds of cooking.

[dwinterfield]

I got this info years ago from a magazine interview with Paul Newman. As IRTrad says you only need enough oil to coat the kernals. The best Newman tip was to pour the butter over the popcorn in the bowl and immediately empty the bowl into a large brown paper bag. Salt it in the bag, close the open end, shake aggressively for a few seconds and then pour it back in the bowl.. It works great.

[Walden]

Great Grandpa Walden, who farmed his alotment with horses, found that crop rotation was the trick to better popcorn.

[Walden]

My mother always thought the best popcorn was made in a hand cranked stove-top popper, using a mixture of corn oil and butter, and salted with popcorn salt.

[Doug_Tipple]

My mother was big on using lard, which she bought in buckets. My dad wanted lard-fried potatoes every day, and no pre-cooked hash browns either. So when it came to popcorn, my mother used a couple of globs of lard in the bottom of a deep aluminum pan with lid. Then she put in enough pop corn to just cover the bottom of the pan. Then over a gas flame she started to shake and bang the pan on the burner, trying to encourage the little kernels to do the thing that they had been waiting for. If you use enough lard in the pan to begin with, you won't need to use much butter, she told me. So, to summarize, our family's secret for really great popcorn is an aluminum pan with lots of lard.

[rebl_rn]

This just in....


Mystery of unpopped popcorn solved

By RICK CALLAHAN
Associated Press Writer
Published April 21, 2005, 9:35 AM CDT

INDIANAPOLIS -- Eat your way to the bottom of almost any bag of popcorn and there they are: the rock-hard, jaw-rattling unpopped kernels known as old maids.

The nuisance kernels have kept many a dentist busy, but their days could be numbered: Scientists say they now know why some popcorn kernels resist popping into puffy white globes.

It's long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center -- about 15 percent -- to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel's explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.

Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.

"They're sort of like little pressure vessels that explode when the pressure reaches a certain point," said Bruce Hamaker, a Purdue professor of food chemistry. "But if too much moisture escapes, it loses its ability to pop and just sits there."

The findings may help popcorn breeders select the best varieties -- or create new ones -- with superior hulls that yield few, if any, unpopped kernels. But for now, there's no way to screen out potential old maids before they end up in bags of popcorn.

Hamaker and his associates compared the microwave popping performance of 14 Indiana-grown popcorn varieties and examined the crystalline structure of the translucent hulls of both the popped kernels and the duds.

In the varieties popped, the percentage of unpopped kernels ranged from 4 percent in premium brands to 47 percent in the cheaper ones.

The findings could be good news for people who savor the snack and those who grow the 17 billion quarts of popcorn sold each year in the United States.

Wendy Boersema Rappel, a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based Popcorn Board, said popcorn processors are always looking for ways to improve their product, including reducing the number of old maids.

"It's one of life's annoyances -- it's not rocking anyone's world, but our members always like to improve their product," Rappel said.

Hamaker said two popcorn manufacturers have already expressed interest in Purdue's findings.

The research, funded by Purdue's Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research, which Hamaker directs, has been published online and will appear in the July 11 edition of the journal BioMacromolecules.

[FJohnSharp]

I read once that peanut oil is the oil of choice for popping corn.