You make popcorn in a heavy pot with a lid. You don't need a special device for it.
2.---Hey, cool! I have one of those. Now all I need is popcorn kernels and a TV.
My favorite thing about my grandmother's popcorn popper was the little thing you put the butter in to melt it while it popped.
I'm with w-lfs-n. Put the oil in the pot, turn on heat, put in one kernel, cover, wait till kernel pops, add rest of popcorn, cover, popopopopopopop.
The first time I made microwave popcorn was in college and when I took the bag out of the microwave a kernel popped and I jumped and dropped it, to the general amusement of my friends.
You melt the butter in the still-hot heavy pan after you dump out the popcorn. Add with salt and brewer's yeast. This is the only way.
brewer's yeast
Talk to me about this. I've never heard of adding it to popcorn, or, really, anything but beer.
I always wonder about "brewer's yeast". Since, as a brewer, most of the yeast I use is wet and sludgy, or dry and granulated like baker's yeast. I assume it's really used/harvested/dead yeast, kind of an intermediate step on the way to Vegemite.
Perhaps it's similar to the weirdly nominated nutritional yeast.
No, no, you always put *nutritional* yeast on popcorn. Everybody knows that!
I've never liked brewer's yeast on popcorn. So there!
My favorite thing about my grandmother's popcorn popper was the little thing you put the butter in to melt it while it popped.
Our popcorn popper had pinholes on top. You'd put a pat of butter on the top and watch it as it slowly melted and dripped onto the popcorn.
This was what we called "entertainment" back in the day, children.
(Um. Lurker. Hi.)
A popcorn popper is that thing you use to roast coffee beans, no?
Nutritional yeast is tasty and cheezy. Also flaky and wholly unlike either cakes of yeast or loose bread yeast.
Data point: we had a popcorn popper sort of like this when I was a kid. But I might be an outlier. We had neither a microwave or a VCR till I was at least ten years old.
Addendum: add some regular M&M's to freshly popped popcorn; shake or stir to distribute; indulge.
there are still popcorn poppers for sale in continental europe.
I have, as has my 25 year old younger sister.
I was very surprised when I first tried it, but nutritional yeast is indeed great on popcorn!
But why would one want cheese flavor on one's popcorn? Surely the one true flavoring is SALTED BUTTER.
w-lfs-n's right, it's the same thing as "nutritional yeast;" I'm not sure why it's called "brewer's yeast," because it's a different form from what I've used in brewing and winemaking. (Incidentally, we've been using ambient yeast for the last couple of years for our wine, which is a kind of magic.) Anyway, it's savory and warm and perfect for popcorn. Sorry, Nápi, I'll have to make a separate batch for you.
Wait, isn't Becks a twentysomething herself?
Becks was a twentysomething until like ten days ago.
Back in the dark ages, before the introduction of electricity to our hovels we used these. One can, BTW, pop corn in a heavy pot without benefit of oil, but jiggling said pot is obligatory.
22, 23: Huh. Guess I haven't been paying close enough attention.
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Which one of you was it that endorsed the Best Recipe recipe for turkey burgers? Becks, maybe? I tried it this evening. It's OK for turkey burger, but I can't see it tempting me away from red meat.
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Anyway, I'm with Yglesias on this. (I'm sure you're all shocked.) Popcorn in the microwave or one of those Jiffy Pop things that you hold over the stove.
My father is a big popcorn fan, and my family owned popcorn poppers of every description (they tended to wear out with heavy use). The most unusual he had was a tin box on the end of a long metal handle that you put popcorn in and then held in the fireplace while the popcorn popped.
Siaselgy is only in his 20s? Fuck.
For the record, I don't wish I was younger.
I just wish I was better looking, and had more energy and fewer responsibilities.
Molly maintains that popcorn popped on the oven is relatively good for you (compared to other snack foods) but that microwave popcorn is bad for you. I don't know if there is any evidence for this claim.
The most unusual he had was a tin box on the end of a long metal handle that you put popcorn in and then held in the fireplace while the popcorn popped.
Ah, my grandmother had one of these; my mom still has it, but alas, the one time we attempted to use it, we burned the shit out of the popcorn.
Drat! It was such a romantic notion!
Molly is (unsurprisingly) correct.
There's some kind of weirdo chemical in microwave popcorn (perhaps only the fake-butter kind) that is fairly toxic to the people in the factory who make it and apparently people who eat a lot of it.
we burned the shit out of the popcorn
Alas, that's pretty easy to do. You have to shake the hell of of it the whole time.
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Related to food, I started a recipe wiki here, which you're all welcome to join. The password is "wmybsalb" as that's something that's easy for us all to remember. Mostly, I've just set up some categories and a how-to/about, with only like three actual recipes, but I'll add more, and I hope you will use it, too.
In part, I'm using this to organize not only my own recipes and recipes from books, but also recipes from other sites I find myself using a lot. But I'd prefer it if we don't just mirror what's on one of our friends' blogs, but just add a link and a response/comment to the various categories, to be polite. Otherwise, full recipes, essays, more elaborate thoughts, etc. are welcome. Do with it what you like.
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Becks was a twentysomething until like ten days ago.
Being a thirtysomething of only three months' standing myself—and having seen a popcorn popper in the kitchen of my ancestral home—it seems Becks' hypothesis is remarkably precise.
33: I did, I did! Honestly, if I remember correctly, despite the shaking, it seemed that by the time the kernels were seemingly mostly popped, the, uh, early poppers burned. Dunno; put too much in there, maybe.
And! Alas, my mother has now chosen to close off her fireplace and stick a pellet stove in there. Dammit, I fought that. Not a stick of romance in that woman's body. (Admittedly, the stove is 20 times more efficient as a heat source than the fireplace. Still I grumble.)
In defense of Huckabee (and with God as my witness, I want that the be the last time I ever write those words), fried squirrel is good eatin'.
My Yankee grandpa was reputed to be a top squirrel-hunter, though he died before I was born so I never tasted one.
32: I had heard about the "popcorn lung" ailment, which strikes microwave popcorn factory workers and at least one microwave popcorn consumer. The other side of the propsition, that ordinary popcorn is relatively good for you, remains demonstrated.
OTOH, I basically buy the Michael Pollan line that no one knows jack about nutrition, and the best bet is just to go with very traditional foods, for Edmund Burke type reasons.
40: Oh yes. I don't think it is good for you -- as in, I don't think that one derives many swell nutrients from popped corn, but for a snack food, it isn't *bad* for one, which is more than many snackythings can say.
This is what we used to pop popcorn in when I was a girl. Antique!1!!!
Although actually I think we inherited it from my grandfather.
Anyway, you held it over the stove (or crouched with it by the fire in the mouth of your cave) and shook it until the popcorn was all popped. Advantage: no oil.
Indeed, that shit will kill you. Air-popped popcorn is relatively healthy, we have an air popper, but most people think it tastes like cardboard. Good for decorating christmas trees, can't do that with microwave popcorn.
Dunno; put too much in there, maybe.
Yep.
im 20 something and i used a popcorn popper as a kid. also i used those popcorn-in-a-pan things for when we went camping. and by camping i mean 'made a fire in our back yard and slept in a tent there so we didn't miss the cartoons the next morning."
Popcorn and a movie here tonight prepared just like in Cala's 5, with cracking the lid when it starts to pop to let the steam escape to reduce sogginess (the one thing the poppers really did better). But as my son pointed out it is one of the least popcorn-friendly movies ever, Eraserhead. The kids are watching it not I, interested to see if they stick it out.
I'm still a twenty-something and have seen a popcorn popper. The far more interesting question to me, is how you fry an animal in a popcorn popper. I tried to convince people at work that we should do it and film it, but that idea doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
The far more interesting question to me, is how you fry an animal in a popcorn popper.
I've been wondering about this too. As noted above, I am not familiar with popcorn poppers, but I have a hard time imagining a device for popping popcorn that could also be used for frying squirrels.
How many possums could a populist possibly pop if a populist could pop possums?
The old poppers use oil to heat the kernels. I guess they decided to try chucking in a squirrel instead of popcorn.
Every time I hear that Huckabee story I think of the film The Triplets of Belleville and how they popped the little tadpoles like popcorn, and I keep imagining tiny squirrel puffs, with little tails.
I like to think that Huckabee is talking about an air popper, and that he would make little puffs of air popped squirrel, like shrimp chips, or little meat-flavored rice puffs.
You make popcorn in a heavy pot with a lid.
Which is exactly how my mom used to make it for me when I was a kid. On Friday nights. While I was watching The Incredible Hulk.
(As a kid, I wanted to get those Jiffy Pop pans, because I was always fascinated by the expanding tinfoil, but my mom was like "I am NOT going spend money to buy something that I can make in a pot.")
One of my college roommates actually had one of those air poppers. I remember watching it go out a window during a party.
Advantage: no oil.
How's that an advantage?
As for La Methode Huckabee, the old poppers are basically a hotplate in a well. Normally one would just put a thin film of oil in there and then the popcorn, but if you put more oil in there, the devices probably had sufficient power to heat that enough to fry chunks of squirrel. Obviously the other staples of dorm cookery, the hot plate, the iron, and the hair dryer, wouldn't work for this.
And a friend in highschool's dad would make mass quantities of popcorn in a large wok with a large colander placed over it. It really was amazing how much popcorn each batch yielded. I can still picture him, oven mitts on both hands, shaking that thing over a very hot flame.
How's that an advantage?
Ask an Iraqi.
In the future, Americans will convert popcorn into biofuel right in their own homes!
I have actually seen one of those huckabee poppers, at someone's house, but I'm with some hybrid of w-lfs-n/Yglesias---You either need a big pot or a microwave. What kind of college specifically allows popcorn poppers?
What kind of college specifically allows popcorn poppers?
The same kind that specifically allows hotplates, I guess.
Also the kind that has students who eat fried squirrel.
Merganser: I was talking to an older colleague about how I spend most of my leisure time cooking these days, and she said one of her biggest regrets is waiting until she was middle-aged to buy le creuset cookware. She was dead serious. She's not a very frivolous woman. I was wondering if this might not apply to me since I'm a vegetarian, but I guess they're good for making popcorn.
As a 20-exactly, my dad liked (likes, I suppose) to make popcorn in this stove-top pot that has a big crank-wheel on top to move the corn around. Not a bad system.
63: I've heard good reports about those, but then I also see a hell of a lot of them in thrift stores.
In the dorms, particularly in the olden days when microwave and toaster oven models consumed much more power than they do now, they wanted to limit the number of major applicances students could have in their rooms (probably also concerns about fire safety). But minor things like hot plates, coffee makers (which you can also cook on apparently), and popcorn makers were often allowed.
probably also concerns about fire safety
If they allowed hotplates, concerns about fire safety couldn't have been the primary reason.
Although when I was in school they didn't allow toasters for fire safety reasons. Microwaves were fine, though.
If they allowed hotplates, concerns about fire safety couldn't have been the primary reason.
They may not have allowed hotplates, I can't reallly remember. I do know that if you want to burn down a dorm, a hotplate is not a very satisfying tool.
In skilled hands it is. It's not the kind of weapon that can be used effectively by just anyone, without training and practice.
69: Exactly! We're talking about undergrads here, and mostly freshman undergrads at that. They need to be given tools appropriate to their skill and experience level if we expect them to have any chance of success.
I do know that if you want to burn down a dorm, a hotplate is not a very satisfying tool.
Unless it's a dorm made of chocolate.
70: I propose lighters and cans of Lysol.
72: You haven't really had a hot dog until you have one made this way.
and grain alcohol
My roommates and I had an experiment of this sort get a little out of hand senior year of college. I'm not comfortable sharing the details, because I'm not sure that the statute of limitations has expired.
You haven't really had a hot dog until you have one made this way.
For that matter, you've never really destroyed a hornets nest until you've done it with a can of starter fluid and a lighter.
Sometimes I think it's a wonder I ever survived into adulthood.
I would've thought that you'd prefer to use this gizmo, apo.
Ile: I'm not actually opposed to fancy cookware. I'm also a vegetarian, so let me know if you try le creuset and decide you love it for what you do. Currently, I have a set of circulon, which I like pretty well.
76: it's a wonder I ever survived into adulthood.
Yeah. We had chemistry sets, atomic energy kits, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, vials of mercury, carbon tetrachloride, sulphuric acid, etc, and experimented with cooking our hot dogs and baked potatoes by passing 110VAC through them.
Also, no one worried about eye or ear protection in chemistry class nor in metal or wood shop. We were warned about wearing loose clothing near a lathe and that's about it.
I really do understand the bennies and I tried to keep my kids safe according to the knowledge current at the time but all the protective gear and incessant warnings about everything still seem very strange to me.
My dad, when he was nine or so, found a bullet, and decided to hit it with a hammer. He shot a tree instead of himself, which is good.
Merganser & Ile: I am a vegetarian, too. Enameled cast-iron cookware is great for soups and sauces. I have one from Lodge, which was about 1/4 of the price of Le Creuset, and it is working very well for me.
I am old enough to know what a popcorn popper is, but have never heard of using it for anything other than popcorn.
79: Oh, yes! That reminds me of all the cautionary (and quite possibly apocryphal) tales of G.I.s and kids in and after WW2 hammering/prying/toasting/dropping various explosive objects to ill effect.
On the other hand, we did get to play with what then appeared to be an inexhaustible supply of ammo belts, gas tents, tank periscopes, and vast amounts of surplus electronics gear from Canal Street in NYC. Empty cigar boxes were the storage of choice.
We now return y'all to 2008. Poor things.
I have one from Lodge,
Ooh, that's a good tip. Thanks!
83: Run "Gilbert atomic energy kit" through Google and see all the hits. My version had a cloud chamber, a Geiger counter, several other gadgets, and the "safe" radioactive samples. I think I got mine in about 1953 or so.
I wish I'd invested in more Le Creuset stuff. I only have one little one that I got at the Woodbury Commons Premium Outlet Mall (greatest shopping experience possible? perhaps!) and I love it, but it's too small to do much with other than make two servings of soup.
My dad, when he was nine or so, found a bullet, and decided to hit it with a hammer. He shot a tree instead of himself, which is good.
Maybe Heebie really is a Texasn after all.
I wish I'd invested in more Le Creuset stuff.
Le Creuset is everything it's cracked up to be, but there are serviceable substitutes in enameled steel that cost a lot less. Marshalls/TJMaxx/Homegoods is a good place to look.
Maybe Heebie really is a Texasn after all.
Daddy was a Jew in New York, but whatever.
Speaking of Woodbury Commons Premium Outlet Mall, if anyone in the NYC area wants to make a pilgrimage up there sometime this spring, I would love to get on board. People come from the farthest reaches of the world to go there, and it's silly that we don't. That is the cheapest, highest-quality shopping I have ever done.
My father has an astonishing story about a high school chemistry demostration that involved setting white phosphorus on fire. The white phosphorus, of course, ended up burning through the beaker and several layers of desk before the fire department was called in. The hapless teacher whose idea this had been was improbably called "Moose."
Oh, and JM, you should come to WCPOM with me. There is a La Perla store.
Where is that? I'm generally very bad at making shopping expeditions, btw. It has been said that I am a cheapskate, and that no bargain will be low enough for me to be happy about spending money.
83: Run "Gilbert atomic energy kit" through Google and see all the hits.
Disappointing--I thought maybe it was a DIY Fission Kit. I would have asked for one for Christmas. Who needs a pellet stove?
I am a total cheapskate, too, but I am in need of things and I know no cheaper place to get them. It's in Westchester. We'll need to recruit someone with a car or figure out the Metro North schedule. I have some friends with a vehicle who might be up for it.
Anyhow, there's a lot of high-end stores like La Perla, Le Creuset, and BCBG, and also mid-range Gap and Williams-Sonoma type places. I got a pair of BCBG slacks for $20.
90: When my dad taught shop, he had his students build a cannon for the homecoming game or something. To fire it, you put balloons filled with acetylene and oxygen (obtained from the cutting torch tanks) in the breach, shut the back, and ignited the balloon. The kids got the ratio of gasses a little bit wrong, and when they test-fired the thing, the concussion took out a couple of windows in the school.
See, AWB, I tend to shop, when I do shop, at Goodwill and Salvation Army. Every once in a while I might have an accident at a higher-end store. Maybe in a couple of months I'll feel ready to undertake an actual expedition. That's when people start breaking out their new spring clothes, and I tend to undergo my periodic crises of coolness.
You can't get flimsy underthings at Goodwill.
I currently have zero dollars, so this is all a deluded fantasy of mine. When the loan check comes in March (three months late), I will throw a fucking party.
No, I'm waiting for someone to buy them for me, see?
My high school chemistry teacher used to tell the story of the student who decided to break up some clumping potassium perchlorate with a hammer and lost her thumb. Dunno if it was a true story. He also loved to go an anti-abortion tirades (this was at a public school).
[Kobe pops a three.]
No, "someone" is probably very nervous of buying anything for me out of fear that it won't be right or that I'll kvetch over price. "Someone" is probably correct to think that while I lust after luxuries, I have a flinty judgmental reflex.
100: My friend Jeff sent a molten glob of potassium perchlorate across the chem lab by heating it too fast and applying the heat alll at the bottom of the test tube. Like I said, no goggles, etc. It hit a cabinet and started a small fire. Nothing official happened that I ever heard about.
Yep, like Bryan said, plenty of popcorn poppers here - we have one. I don't find the butter melts fast enough in the little pan on top though (or I use too much butter), so I always do it in the microwave.
I grew up with a popcorn popper that saw frequent use.
My high school chemistry teacher was an old lady and endlessly full of verve and would routinely say things like:
"You kids better go around this wall in case this blows up."
or
"That's going to blow up in his face, you just watch."
or
"If I dropped this jug right now you couldn't get me in the shower fast enough; I'd have two bloody stumps for legs."
or
"You kids can't touch this mercury. I can because, hell, I've already had cancer once."
