I started making my own popcorn one summer when I was craving for something healthier to go with beer on hot days. I know that seems like an oxymoron: popcorn — healthy?
While we’re accustomed to associating the taste (and smell) of popcorn with that velvety buttery, salty taste of those you get at movie theatres, popcorn was discovered by Native Americans and has had a long and interesting history. Apparently, they were traditionally done with herbs, but for the world of me I can’t seem to find the reference to this today.
Chowhound has a long thread about making popcorn. Recipes are easily found online, and the historical recipes in “Popped Culture“, a book on the social history of popcorn in America, carry some most fascinating … uh, concoctions.
Here’s how I do my popcorn:
- I use a 2 litre non-stick saucepan with a lid, it makes plenty enough popcorn. (And I figure if all this gets eaten in one sitting, it doesn’t take that long to make another fresh batch.)
- I pour in enough oil to just cover the bottom of the pot, probably amounting to 3 or 4 tablespoons, and turn the stovetop burner to high heat.
- Then I pour in enough organic popcorn to cover the bottom of the saucepan in a single layer, add herbs as desired and a little salt. I typically just sprinkle enough herbs to lightly cover the kernels.
- I swirl the corn around in the herbs and oil so they are well covered, and while the corn heats up, I continue to gently shake the contents by moving the saucepan back and forth just over the burner. Some methods recommend keeping the lid at a slight angle to let steam escape, but I haven’t found this to be necessary.
- You’ll hear the number of pops increases, rise to a crescendo (what music!) by which time I typically turn the heat down to medium.
- When the popping slows down to one or two per second, I remove it from the stove and pour it all into a big bowl, where I add more salt. I’ve found that when you add salt later while the corn is still warm, the salt is more evenly coated over the freshly popped corn and you won’t need to add as much.
For whatever reason, my recipes all taste better by the time the popcorn has cooled a little.
Contrary to what we may first think —which may be getting the saucepan as hot as possible and keeping it as hot as possible — getting the corn to pop evenly is about increasing the pressure, and getting the corn kernels to a uniform pressure until the corn begins to pop. After some time, it’ll practically cause a chain reaction by energy released with each pop, so you don’t actually need to add extra heat by the time you have a good amount of popping going on if you keep the lid on tight. Therefore, you don’t need a lot of oil either. The oil can speed up the even heating of the kernels and flavour the popcorn, but too much will probably result in soggy popcorn. Keeping in mind that the hottest part of the saucepan is still the bottom and that already popped corn can act as an insulating layer, moving the saucepan around the burner helps ensure the unpopped kernels don’t burn, but remain at the bottom where it is hottest. This also helps to make sure the herbs, spices or salt continue to mix well throughout the popping process.
So, here are a couple of my favourite herb+spice+oil combinations:
- olive oil, 1 part paprika, 2 part dried oregano, 1 part sea salt
- olive oil, 2 part garam masala, 1 part tarragon, 1 part sea salt and/or herb salt
Warning: they can be highly addictive. The good thing here is that if you’ve made your own, you know exactly what went into it, and you can choose to stick to healthier ingredients.
Some Chowhound recipes recommend coconut oil or grapeseed oil. The latter sounds great, though the former makes me think it won’t help my waistline!
