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.
You must use refined coconut oil. As long as it is refined, there is no coconut flavor. It basically just tastes like theatre popcorn, because that’s what they use. They just use a fancier version that has beta-carotene in it, for a nice yellow coloring.
Man, I could definitely go for regular coconut flavor on popcorn though! Toss in some dehydrated pineapple bits…
Oh that sounds great. If you want to get real fancy, toss in some coconut shreds and toasted walnut pieces. Dang I know what I’m doing for my next movie night. My popcorn popper hasn’t been used in a few months.
So, that’s why it’s so expensive!
I really like unrefined coconut oil for popcorn. It’s not a super strong coconut flavour at all, but it adds a nice subtle complexity to the popcorn. Definitely worth trying if it’s what you have on hand anyway :). I prefer it, even!