Recently I had a friend over and she made me laugh so hard. I was making popcorn for us and she kept saying things like, “If this works . . . .” “I can’t wait to see if this works.” “Are you sure this is going to work out?” It made me laugh. I had a pot and I made a HUGE bowl of popcorn. I didn’t take pictures at the time because I didn’t think I would blog about it, but then I made some more the other day and it reminded me that popcorn can be a healthy snack.
Ever cooked it on the stove?
I use a pot that will net me as much popcorn as I want. Remember a little pot will still net you a lot of popcorn. Since I use different size pots I don’t measure per se.
Pour enough olive oil in the bottom of the pot to cover from 1/2 to 3/4 of the bottom. You don’t want so much oil that the whole bottom of the pot is covered, then you will just end up with oily popcorn.
Let the oil get hot. Then pour enough popcorn in to fill the bottom. I usually let it make about two “layers”. Then put the lid on.
I realized that I was not good at making popcorn in a pot until I got pots and pans with glass lids. I always wanted to SEE if the popcorn is popping, so I would lift the lid. And that would take the heat out of the pot and the popcorn would burn before it popped. But with a glass lid I can let all the heat build up in the pot, which allows the heat to build up in the kernel and then POP!
I DO move the pot around, shaking it. I have a glasstop so I lift the pot up to shake it, but if you have a stove that you can move your pot around while it is still on the heat that is even better.
HAVE A BOWL READY! Because once the pot gets full and the popcorn starts pushing the lid off you need to start pouring. So just keep putting the popcorn in the bowl, return the pot to the stove, let more popped corn fill the pot, pour, pop, pour, pop. You might be able to turn the stove off in between that, it all depends on your stove and your pot, but you will get the hang of it after a couple of times.
Re-reading this before I post makes me want popcorn. Do you like popcorn? How do you cook it?
After I am done, I just salt it, I don’t use butter. But if you do, you can just melt it in the pot you just used to cook the popcorn. And if you do use butter, the calories and the fat content of the snack does go up. But, I think that butter is better than the “butter” they use at the theater. What is that stuff? Ewww.
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