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.
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smacks forehead
That is a great idea! Coconut oil was ok,but kinda odd-flavored for popcorn …
Since ghee is so expensive, I usually do coconut oil and ghee mixed!
I love ghee on my stovetop popcorn! A wok works great!
Dude, my mom makes ghee out of milk. It costs literally nothing
That’s not true because you still have to buy the milk.
Not if you’re a mom 😉
Tiddy butter popcorn is a sentence crafted by war criminals to torture the goodness from the world.
What a sentence
Bruh
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.
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.
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.
Sorry for the hijack, but the post I see above this comment is some baseball scores. Twins @ Braves. Using Lemmy.world in a web browser. What’s going on?
This is the URL: https://lemmy.world/post/661229?scrollToComments=true
It’s another websocket related bug that’s already been fixed! lemmy.world is currently out of date, however. If you want to get rid of it, either wait for Ruud to push the update, or switch instances.
It’s a bot. I kept getting it too and there are identical ones for other teams.
Here’s how I blocked it. Click on the community listed next to the (bot) username. Then on that page block the community. It should be on the upper part on the right close to where it says join the community.
I had like three bot baseball communities that I blocked.
Avocado oil is great for popcorn. It doesn’t add any flavor but I love the resulting texture: very crisp and clean. I like using red or blue corn because the contrast is visually appealing. You want long, skinny kernels to get the butterfly popcorn. Personally I’m crazy for cheesy popcorn, and the secret there is to find cheese powder with some savory herbs like oregano. I also love to do it with Kashmiri (floral hot Indian chili) powder.
Important edit: Do NOT under any circumstance use chili popcorn to spice up Netflix & Chill. This is a snack for lonely degenerates who don’t even masturbate daily any more. It’s for watching war documentaries and French New Wave, not pervy cartoons and superhero throwdowns with plot designed to be ignored while you finger your frenemies. You won’t look worldly and sophisticated while you’re driving somebody to the fucking hospital. Be responsible.
Burlap and barrel has a black lime and a black urfa chili that are just fantastic on popcorn.
Asking your would-be date if they want to Burlap & Barrel just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…
Someone’s speaking from experience…
You can also get brewers yeast
Olive oil here. The market nearby doesn’t sell canola oil because it was never popular. MSG is also great on popcorn.
Nutritional yeast is also amazing. Gives it a cheesy flavor, and it’s healthy to boot!
Nutritional yeast, chicken salt, and ghee for the oil is my go to. Absolutely delicious.
I second that comment.
It’s been about two decades since I’ve gone there, but the Landmark Cinemas in the San Diego area had nutritional yeast for your popcorn, right there in the station where you pump your own butter and grab napkins. Curious, I gave it a try…
For the past twenty years (give or take), a can of Bragg’s Nutritional Yeast has been an ever-present staple in the kitchen, which I use to season popcorn, as well as slightly charred tortillas with either butter or avocado.
Olive oil has a very distinct olive flavour and is generally not advised to heat up to much, since it gets carcinogenic
Ghee sounds awesome for popcorn! I use refined coconut oil and Flavacol at the moment.
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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.
They just use a fancier version that has beta-carotene in it, for a nice yellow coloring.
So, that’s why it’s so expensive!
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.
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!
Also, as far as i know, you can buy the same seasoning they put on the popcorn at the theaters. Its called flavacol.
Also, beware of bagged popcorn a lot of the bags contain PFAS, which is supposedly bad for you.
As I mentioned in a comment above, I have one of those theater poppers. But in those, the flavacol goes into the hopper right along with the kernels and your oil of choice. It’s not an oil substitute. It’s good stuff, but hard to find in less than 5-pound boxes.
…holy shit you’re a genius.
**gheenius
Ugh. That was so bad. I love that for you.
We use non-virgin olive oil. High smoke point, but good flavor.
Don’t some companies sell “popcorn oil”? What is that made of?
Oil and artificial flavors. I’ve tried a lot of them and none of them have a “real” butter flavor. It’s more of a greasy feel than taste.
Agreed, my few attempts at using it always ended up tasting like plain popcorn and whatever salt/herb mix I threw on. They also tended to smoked up my house but that may have partially been user error.
soybean oil, usually. and diacetyl can be added as a buttery flavoring.
fun fact: diacetyl inhaled in large enough doses can cause bronchitis. this was a problem in popcorn topping factories, hence the term “popcorn lung”
That’s great and all, but if any discussion about popcorn on the stove doesn’t involve Flavicol, it’s simply incomplete.
Never tried Ghee. I usually use canola, coconut, or bacon grease. I’m up for more buttery flavor though. Thanks!
Bacon grease sounds incredible. How much of the flavor ends up in the popcorn?
It’s subtle, but I only use just enough to pop the kernels. I also have a jar of it by the stove most of the time.
Sounds a bit like that bacon popcorn…
I’ve always just used avocado oil. Sometimes coconut oil but that obviously leaves a faint hint of coconut that not everyone likes. I’ll try ghee next time but I never heard of anyone trying to make pop corn with just butter in the pan. That sounds like a mistake folks only make once! lol
The makers of my commercial-grade popper recommend coconut oil. Like you, I am interested in trying ghee. It’s good to just have a bottle of that stuff handy for lots of things.
I think ghee is clarified butter.
They are pretty much the same thing. Clarified butter can be skimmed as soon as the milk solids begin to separate. Ghee is cooked until the solids become browned and settle to the bottom, giving it more of a nutty flavor.
For any dairy intolerant or vegan people here you can get a similar effect by clarifying a vegetable spread like Flora and adding salt until it tastes ‘buttery’ enough for you
Exactly. And don’t use the vegan butter to pop the corn, just use some neutral vegetable oil like rapeseed oil there. After the corns have popped, just melt the vegan butter in a pan and drip it over your popcorn.
Peanut Oil is the answer. High smoke point, taste negligible.
- Not buttery
- Although it probably doesn’t kill the housemate with the peanut allergy, it makes them very uncomfortable and possibly costs them a significant medical bill.
Should note that refined peanut oil will not cause allergic reactions in the majority of peanut allergy sufferers (although it really isn’t worth risking).
I add butter back into the pot after popping to melt (add flavours), then pour on popcorn.
I tried ghee, it tasted awful. Butter flavored coconut oil is where it’s at.
Add in a teaspoon of Tabasco to the butter/ghee/oil before popping. 🍿
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