Why YSK: Popcorn fans often want a buttery flavor, but plain butter is a bad choice for popping popcorn in a pot, because the proteins and sugars smoke and burn around the same temperature where it’s hot enough to pop the kernels.

Ghee, or Indian-style clarified butter, is butter that’s been simmered and the milk solids (proteins and sugars) skimmed off. This leaves a clear yellow oil that doesn’t smoke when it’s heated and doesn’t go rancid quickly, but has a distinct toasty butter flavor.

Vegetable oil is either flavorless or faintly bitter, and some high-temperature vegetable oils tend to start polymerizing (i.e. becoming plastic) when heated in small amounts. This is also not good for popcorn.

Good-quality popcorn popped in ghee reliably produces lots of “butterfly” popcorn with few unpopped “duds” and no scorched kernels or batches ruined by smoke.

Try it! I’m sure not going back to canola oil.

  • @acupofcoffee
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    131 year ago

    Since ghee is so expensive, I usually do coconut oil and ghee mixed!

    I love ghee on my stovetop popcorn! A wok works great!

    • @deviant
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      101 year ago

      Dude, my mom makes ghee out of milk. It costs literally nothing

        • @Fondots
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          341 year ago

          Not if you’re a mom 😉

          • @BloodyFable
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            181 year ago

            Tiddy butter popcorn is a sentence crafted by war criminals to torture the goodness from the world.

      • xuxebiko
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        fedilink
        71 year ago

        to make ghee at home costs lots of milk, time, and effort. Try making ghee yourself from cratch and you’ll know exactly how much it really costs.

    • @blueskiesoc
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      71 year ago

      Go to youtube and watch how to make ghee. It’s quite simple. I use butter to make mine. I won’t buy expensive storebought again because it’s so cheap and simple to make.

    • @fireweed
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      11 year ago

      If you have access to Costco, they sell huge tubs of ghee for a way, way better value than the tiny containers you’d find at the grocery store. Ghee has a pretty good shelf life, however I divide my Costco tub up into smaller containers and freeze what I don’t plan on using within a few months, to extend the shelf life further.