Best Popcorn EVER

Cinnamon and Sugar Popcorn

I’ve never been a lover of popcorn. As a kid, it was fun to watch the kernels explode out of the air popper and try to anticipate the optimal bowl position to avoid any on the floor or counter top. Popcorn at the movies was always a special treat, but it was more part of the experience than something I would choose on my own.

Then I grew up, had kids who couldn’t eat gluten or dairy products, and I had to find easy snacks on a budget. Not too easy. We tried air popped a few times with the traditional salt and the kids seemed to hold the same opinion as I did. Too much butter on the top and all the salt sunk to the bottom of the bowl. A friend suggested trying the traditional stove top popping method before giving up completely. After one try, I’ve never looked back. This stuff is GOOD.

There’s no real recipe. Instead, it’s more of a method. You pour oil into a heavy bottom COLD pan. Add however many corn kernels you want. The trick is to have enough oil to puddle around your SINGLE LAYER of kernels. If you didn’t add enough to begin with, pour in a bit more.

Turn on your burner to a medium or medium low. You know your stove top the best. It really is trial and error.

Keeping the pot on the burner, shift it around a few times every minute (to allow the kernels to evenly heat) until your first kernel pops. Quickly add your seasoning of choice, evenly sprinkling over corn. Keep shaking it!

Add a lid to the pot and continue to shake it, occasionally lifting it off the burner to shake the pot up and down to get all the tasty bits evenly coating the popcorn.

As soon as you hear the last pop, pour all your fluffy bites of hot deliciousness into a large bowl to prevent burning in the pot. Wait, if you can, for it to cool enough to touch and enjoy.

So far, we’ve tried the traditional salt flavoring and also adding cinnamon and sugar. The cinnamon and sugar meets my cravings for hot breakfast toast, which is nice! I wouldn’t recommend using butter as the oil but if you want the butter flavor, maybe try using imitation butter flavoring. It’s completely vegan (though it does have yellow food dye) and scarily, tastes JUST like the real thing. I wonder if that’s what the movie theaters add to their popcorn oil to create the butter flavor, since popcorn from movie theaters are dairy free.

Stovetop Popcorn from Dallas Ann Prentice on Vimeo.

This is a video of Miles experiencing stove top method for the first time. Completely hilarious.

p.s. Is there a word that just feels misspelled every time you write it, even though you KNOW it’s right? Kernel is one of those for me. My brain nearly exploded writing this.

Posted by ... on August 24, 2012

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