How To Make the Best Gourmet Popcorn With One Simple Trick

Calling all my fellow popcorn lovers! Today I’m showing you my favorite way to elevate the basic snack we all know and love to gourmet popcorn status. We’ll start with basic ingredients of popcorn, butter and sea salt. With a delectable twist, leaving it with these 3 simple ingredients will make the best popcorn you may have ever had. Then, I’ll show all you flavor aficionados out there some of our family’s favorite variations.

Click here to jump to my special popcorn trick.

Click here to jump to our family’s favorite flavor variations.

First Up: Highest Quality Ingredients

Good job for making the healthy choice to make popcorn from scratch, rather than going with the microwave method, or buying a pre-made bag. By making this choice alone, you’re already committing to far better ingredients!

Popcorn:

Orville, the common popcorn brand that we find in all the grocery stores is a great place to start, as it is at least non-gmo…which is imperative to look for in corn, one of the most genetically modified foods out there. But with that kind of reputation, I look for organic. The best price I’ve found is with Azure standard. We buy it by the 5lb bags.

Butter:

Per usual, I’m calling for grass-fed butter. There’s so much we don’t have control over with our food, and even in buying so-called grass-fed butter, unless we know the farm where it is coming from, we’re really just at the mercy of marketing. However, we have a far better shot of it being quality in buying grassfed than generic butter alone. Organic cows can still be raised in feedlots, so our family has made the switch from organic to grass-fed, in hopes of getting our butter from the healthiest cows.

Salt:

Look for salt that boasts a broad range of minerals to help you get your daily value of those important nutrients. There are plenty of fancy salts like Redmond or Celtic Salt, but I cannot convince my chemist-husband that those need to be a priority in our budget. I trust his scientific brain, despite everyone else in the blogosphere is shouting “Redmond!” Yet again, I have found Azure to be the place with the best price. Their Himalayan salt contains 84 trace minerals, no added anti-caking agents, and is only $1.37 per pound! (Quick FYI, not everything at Azure is cheaper—always compare!)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil:

We only use about a teaspoon of this to pop the popcorn, but every little bit of antioxidants and bioflavonoids that we get into our bodies count! And, vice/versa, every bit of toxin that we consume builds up too. Do your best to keep seed oils out of your house entirely (even sunflower oil), unless you’re pressing your own and can confirm that they are not oxidized, are cold pressed and not chemically extracted!

EQUIPMENT NEEDED

I use a whirly pop and love it! (Shocker, I found it at a thrift store for $6. That must be the common thrift store price for popcorn makers!) In our house, we prefer the whirly pop or pan method over the air popper. It’s weird… the air popper’s is clearly not wet, but it seems to have a soggier texture. The whirly pop makes it perfectly light, yet crispy.

If you don’t have a whirly pop, you can still make it in a pan on the stove. If you’ve never done it before, this post has great instructions. (I would use 1 tsp of olive oil instead of 5tbs of coconut oil, since we’re planning on using butter.)

Make the Popcorn

1/2 C popcorn kernels
1 tsp olive oil.
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 stick of butter (1/4 cup)

I love trying to get the portions to simple ratios that are easy to remember. Knowing that it’s “half” of everything makes it simple! And for the 1 tsp of olive oil, I’m not precious about it. I give a little swirl in my pan and call it good!

Before you start your popcorn, put your butter in a pan and get it melting on low heat.

Oil your pan of choice and put in 1/2 cup of popcorn. THEN heat your pan. Pretty much any time my popcorn has not popped, it’s been because the pan was too hot to start. Set the stove to medium heat, then get to cranking or shaking! After a few minutes, you’ll start getting a pop here and there, then suddenly it will go crazy.

As I encourage with most of my food posts, use an oversized bowl! I find time and again that having a massive bowl makes for fewer messes, and I’m able to mix more thoroughly. Dump the popcorn out into the bowl. Our family always requires 2-3 of these small batches, and I like to pop it all before flavoring.

Make the most flavorful popcorn with with my special trick:

My absolute favorite trick for amazing popcorn is to brown the butter. What isn’t better with a little browned butter!? You set your butter on low heat before you started your popcorn. Now that the popcorn is popped and you can watch it carefully, you can turn up the heat if you want. Brown butter is the sweet, magic spot that comes right before the rank, fishy spot!

To Achieve Brown Butter:

Once the butter is melted, it will kind of start sputtering and bubbling. Let it keep going. All of a sudden it will foam up like the most decadent latte you’ve ever had. You’ll be raising joy in your home as eveyone starts smelling a faint hint of brown sugar. I watch for the color at this point, and once it’s a nice golden brown, I take it off the heat.

Pour the browned butter over the popcorn, then top with 1/2 tsp of salt. *Note: if your butter is salted, you’ll want to do a little less salt.

Thoroughly mix it up in that nice, big bowl of yours, and enjoy your new favorite snack with the most unique flavor!

Campbell Variations:

”Thyme and Cheese Popcorn”

To dress it up and delight your taste buds at first bite, sprinkle about a teaspoon of nutritional yeast on it. That gives it a delicious, yet unusual flavor, similar to that of cheddar cheese that you get in pre-made popcorn. But, in using this natural flavor, instead of being poisoned, we’re taking in an incredible source of B vitamins. In recent years, our family’s favorite combination is to add 1/2 tsp of thyme and 1/2 tsp of garlic powder to the nutritional yeast and browned butter. Sometimes I’ll brown actual minced garlic in the butter instead of using the powder.

”Caramel Corn”

If you’re craving sweet treats, once the butter is melted, add a tablespoon of natural, unprocessed sugar. Stir well until thoroughly melted. Pour over popcorn and mix well. In the fall and winter, I often give our caramel popcorn a hefty pinch of seasonal flavors like cardamom and cinnamon for a perfect treat for movie nights. I need to swirl in a bit of my alcohol-free vanilla sometime and see how that tastes!

Delicious New Flavor LOADED with nutrients

I’m guessing a lot of people will be scared off by this, but I’m going to do my best to convince you. Ready? Whew. Here I go: make organ salt. Ha ha! Are you excited? But listen, don’t rule this out. I don’t lie to you on here. I said this is a “delicious” new flavor, and I FOR SURE don’t think liver is delicious. If you are like me, and buy your beef by the cow, and you’re left with all these organs, some with the warning not to eat them in their very name, (offal—who wants to eat something named that!?) we need to find a way to get this nutritional powerhouse into our bodies. The only way that is happening for me is with mixing a small amount into a large amount of salt. Sprinkle some on your popcorn with a little brewers yeast… YUM.

Give the nostalgic classics a new, healthy twist.

I hope popcorn enthusiasts will give this salty treat a new lease on life by replacing pre-made and toxic popular flavors that you can buy from most popular popcorn companies with nourishing AND delicious swaps. You’ll still enjoy the classic popcorn experience, but your body will THANK YOU!

(PS, if you have a real love of popcorn, the second Thursday of every March is apparently National Popcorn Lover’s Day. I missed my opportunity for a viral post with my liver popcorn variation! Here’s to hoping I’ll convince the world next March. 🙂 )

Leave a comment and let us know two things: will you be trying organ-salt popcorn, and what’s your favorite way to flavor popcorn?