The Secret To Making Amazing Popcorn
Who doesn’t love a good batch of fresh popcorn as you sit down and watch a movie or your favorite TV show? For years, I relied upon the standard bag of microwave popcorn, but then my brother showed me the light and turned me onto a much better (and healthier way).
It comes down to a combination of 3 key things:
A Stovetop Popper
The first step is getting the right tool for the job. And there is one de facto standard for popcorn enthusiasts. It’s the old fashioned hand crank popper (Real Simple recommends the Whirley-Pop hand-cranked stovetop popcorn popper, $30, amazon.com).
Of all the poppers out there, the stovetop crank popper makes the best popcorn. It’s light and crisp and it only takes a few minutes to pop. Air poppers are also good but you sacrifice the great flavor when you go sans oil.
The Right Oil
Now that you’ve got the right popper, the next most important thing is the oil. I’ve settled upon using coconut oil for my needs.
Coconut oil will give you that movie-theatre style taste without all that fake butter and coloring. While it has a high fat content, there are other health benefits of the oil and some experts say the type of saturated fat in coconut oil is beneficial.
The Right Salt
Until very recently, I would toss my popcorn in table salt, never happy with the end results. It seemed that almost all the salt just fell to the bottom of the bowl.
Then I stumbled across salt designed specifically for popcorn. It’s a much finer grain and sticks to the kernels much better. I use Morton Popcorn Salt, but you can likely find other brands (or just finer salt) that offer the same style.
So there you have, the combination of an old-fashioned stovetop hand cranker, coconut oil and popcorn salt will result in some amazing and flavorful popcorn.
As a bonus, I use Bob’s Red Mill popcorn as I found it to pop fully and had great reviews.
Here’s our favorite brown-bag popcorn recipe. Get the written recipe instructions here.