Popcorn is the best snack in the world, and here are several axiomatic truths to help you enjoy it more:
- Popcorn is intended to be popped in oil. Air popped and microwave popcorns are but a pale imitation of the true glory of oil-popped corn. If you’re into redundancy, corn oil works well, but I prefer olive oil. You know why movie theater popcorn tastes so good? It’s because they pop it in coconut oil, the most saturated, least healthy oil you can get that doesn’t come from a dead animal. (Exception to this rule: microwave caramel corn, which can be glorious, but is also pretty tough to find. Additionally, it’s not really wonderful because of the corn, but because of this gooey caramel stuff and the convolutions you have to go through to get it distributed across the popcorn evenly, building oddly shaped apparatus out of tinfoil that burn your fingers before dumping the piping-hot caramel-popcorn mixture all over your new carpet. But I digress.)
- Popcorn is versatile. Though butter & salt, the old standby, works pretty well, one must experiment to make the most of this snack of all trades. Some of my favorite flavorings include Lowry’s brand seasoned salt (accept no substitutes!), Tony Chachere’s cajun seasoning, parmesan cheese, and chili powder & salt. There are also various powdered cheeses available at finer popcorn stores everywhere that are good if you like that sort of thing.. (Heaven knows I do.) And now that I think about it, experimenting with curry is probably worthwhile too. I’ll let you know.
- Finally, the very best part about popcorn is after you eat most of the fully popped kernels and get down to the unpopped ones at the bottom, and find the rare barely-popped kernels that have just a bit of white peeking out of the husk. They only comprise about 2% of any batch, but they’re the best part of the whole experience, something akin to eating fish eyes for an eskimo, I suspect. Why doesn’t Frito-Lay make a barely-popped-corn snack? Would having them removed from the rest of the batch of popcorn somehow cheapen their specialness? A question for the ages, I guess, since nobody seems inclined to pick those kernels out for me. We can put a man on the moon, blah blah blah…
To summarize: popcorn. It’s yummy. Eat it.