Popcorn

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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today, Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with auto-quote explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, not available in all states or situations. This is very based on how you buy. Two bags of wise popcorn. Wow. So I would get two bags of wise buttered popcorn after school

every day. I would make it in the microwave. We had a microwave popper and it was great because it was like very easy hard to mess up. I think it wasn't like I was plugging in an appliance specifically for it or like running a gas stove. My oldest popcorn memories are, I remember watching the first Star Wars with my dad. We were sitting on the living room floor. It was out on TV. It must have been like 1984

because it was like it's the world television premiere of Star Wars or whatever. The network premiere. We were watching Star Wars and it was towards the end of the movie and my mom was trying to get us to go to bed. My dad was trying to convince her that it was okay for us to stay up. I remember him arguing with her that I should be watching this movie and really I was just sitting there trying to find the pieces of popcorn that had

the most butter soaked into them. Because my dad used to make popcorn with a ton of butter and you would not clarify the butter so some of the pieces would get that kind of soggy ness that they get when the water part of the clarified butter gets into them. So you get those few popcorn kernels that are like really soaked and soggy with butter and I actually enjoy those. From PRX's radio toopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we

help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of the Food Lab and the Walk and Economist for the New York Times. Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen and the author of three best-selling cookbooks. We've both been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades and we've got the same basic goal to make recipes that work for

you and make you excited to get in the kitchen. But we've got very different approaches and on this show we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week on the recipe with Kenji and Deb we're talking about popcorn. Thanks to Earlywood for their support on the recipe. Why just

pass down family recipes when you can pass down the tools that made them too? Earlywood is dedicated to crafting heirloom quality wooden kitchen utensils that will last as long as your family traditions. Their utensils are meticulously handmade in the USA from the best hardwoods, safe for all cookware and backed by a lifetime guarantee. This holiday season started new tradition by giving the gift of earlywood. Use code recipe15 for 15% off your

order. Visit earlywooddesigns.com and start a timeless utensil collection today. Kenji, why did we decide to do an episode devoted to popcorn? Because popcorn is the world's greatest snack. It is a it's got skiff to snacking. I fully agree. It is my favorite snack. It is also the reason why melted butter was invented. Perhaps. I know. I'm definitely not. Is melted butter your favorite topping? I'm a big fan of movie theater popcorn to

be honest, which is not actually made with melted butter. I think back in the day, it probably did you see what it was melted but there's no butter in movie theater. What? I'm shocked. I thought that was so natural. Should we get into this now? Do you want to talk a little bit more about the history of popcorn first? Let's talk a little bit about popcorn because I did not know. I guess it shouldn't be surprising how old popcorn is in my prusel of Wikipedia

before we think. We know that corn was domesticated 10,000 years ago, but I was I thought it was interesting that there was evidence of popcorn like actually popped corn and prove from over a thousand years ago. In Peru. In Peru. And then there's more definitive evidence of popcorn from New Mexico, which was from 3600 BC. Anyway, popcorn is very old. It's a lot older than I thought it was. It's a pretty natural product, right? Because all you're doing is taking

corn that has naturally dried and then heating it, right? And that's all you have to do. And then it pops. I must have been discovered accidentally. You know, like all the dishes. Like someone left it out in the sun or something. I got a little bit too hot. But you don't have an all-nighter. All the great fruit recipes are usually somebody accidentally made something and it turned into this world famous recipe and it always sounds really bogus. But I could

completely have some dried corn lying around and be like, what just happened, man? What's that? They happen to have some dried corn, some very fine salts and some melted butter like. Maybe. But it got much bigger when we had a popcorn maker invented in the 1890s. It was this guy named Charles Creteer and he was a candy store owner and he created a number of steam powered machines or roasting nuts and he applied the technology to corn kernels.

And that was the first popcorn maker. Popcorn is not a particularly complicated thing, right? All the way it works is there's you have dried corn. There's a teeny bit of moisture left inside it and it ends up with this kind of hard plastic like shell outside because the

starch and everything just hardens as it dries. And then what happens is when you heat it, that little bit of air and moisture inside turns the steam and then it builds up a lot of pressure and then suddenly finally when the outer shell cracks, it puffs open all the starch sets in place and you end up with popcorn. And you can do the same way that you would get things like puffed rice or puffed all those breakfast cereals that are puffed. They're all

made with essentially the same process. Yeah, there's popped quinoa, amaranth I've had. Do you remember like 10 years ago there was also a product called like half pops I think that was specifically popcorn for people who like those little half pop kernels at the bottom? Really, do you like those half pop kernels at the bottom of popcorn?

I do. I don't like the fully unpopped kernels but I love the half pop kernels, ones that are really crunchy and sometimes I like because what happens when you're popping corn in a pan or in a wok or whatever is that the smaller bits as you're shaking the pan, the smaller bits all fall to the bottom, right? And so those little bits, the little bits like the

little half popped ones are denser and heavier and smaller so they fall to the bottom. So they spend a lot of time on the bottom of the pan and they actually end up getting like a little bit of a toasty flavor I find. So I do like having like the light, the lighters or cleaner taste of the popcorn on top and then when you get to the bottom of the bowl you get these little toasty crunchy bits. They've also collected the maximum amount of butter and salt so they're extra fun to eat.

But I feel like it ranges from brands because there's some local popcorn I buy that they'll like the half pop ones are delicious and then sometimes from the bigger brand the half pop ones just taste like unpleasantly shall like but you know there's a lot of different brands there's a lot of different varieties of popcorn. Speaking of brands before we get into sort of popcorn actual popcorn popping techniques do you want to talk about some of our favorite popcorn snacks like existing ones

that you can just go out and buy? Cracker Jack has to be the most classic one right didn't you like get those at a ball game and they have those weird little games in them and like prices. Certainly the most sung about one. Yeah Cracker Jack. Did you ever get this used to there was always some girl in my summer campunk every summer whose parents would send her one of those giant tins.

I don't know if it's Garrett Indiana brand or there's a lot of brands to do it but it's these giant tins a popcorn with a three-part divider and I think one is caramel one is like some sort of cheddar popcorn it's like orange and the other one is maybe like a classic butter salt. I know great and they're like absurdly expensive right. I don't know I wasn't buying them

as a kid I was eating them. I didn't know. There's a place like that in Seattle there's a place like that in Seattle down in Pike Place some really crazy price but you look at those popcorn kernels so first of all those are all made with mushroom popcorn as a popcorn. Mushroom popcorn. It's a snowflake popcorn. I actually meant to pick some of that up before this episode because

it's such beautiful popcorn is that perfectly round stuff. That's the popcorn that's made specifically that popcorn they choose it for caramel corn and for kettle corn because it doesn't have the same sort of surface area that snowflake popcorn has. The snowflake popcorn it has a lot of surface area and those are the ones that you get at the movie theater. Those are designed to be like really crunchy or bred to be really crunchy. And they lock into each other so you can pick up more than one

piece at a time. Exactly. Exactly. Whereas mushroom popcorn has a lower like it's basically a spear so it has the lowest possible surface area to volume ratio and that's so that they don't get soggy or you don't get like big chunks of like caramel or whatever. Cobb in the cracks. That's why they choose that popcorn specifically. We should clarify that there's no mushrooms in mushroom. I think they're called mushroom because they shape like mushrooms. No but people get very upset when

you talk about there being mushrooms and things that should not have mushroom. There's no mushroom and it's just about the shape but it makes I have to say as an eating popcorn if you were just to put butter on it I've bought it before it looks so cool and a bowl but it's not the most interesting

tasting popcorn. It doesn't have a lot of crunch. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Mushroom popcorn in knees that kind of like candy shell or whatever in these like some kind of flavor coating to add that texture or to really boost up its flavor because otherwise it doesn't pick up as much as the snowflake style does. I didn't get to talk about my favorite popcorn product which is actually my favorite snack to buy it that is not homemade of course is I love smart food popcorn.

You know I'm going to work in like cheddar powder into almost every episode of this podcast. Smart food is so perfect. I feel like I probably didn't eat it between college and like seven years ago and then I like rediscovered it and it turned out it's still absolutely perfect and it's definitely one of my favorite things to keep around. I'm in a family of potato chip people so I usually get to keep it for myself. That's their favorite snack. Smart food by the way.

Have you ever noticed that smart food and other things that have that sort of like aged cheddar flavor or Parmesan flavor if you smell them the wrong way or in the wrong from a mind they have like kind of vomit smell to them. Are you getting ruined this for me? Don't worry about that Kenji. That's the butyric acid. Butyric acid is a smell of vomit. It's also like one of the main smells in Parmesan cheese and cheddar cheese. Go open your bag of smart food

to think about vomit. No you can't make me do this. I love it and you're not going to take this away from me. I love smart food too. It's so good. I think we talked about this maybe on the Mac and cheese episode but the person who started the smart food company is the amy's from like amy's mac and cheese. Like she had a vision. Okay. Did I miss any great popcorn products? My great popcorn product is movie theater popcorn. That's by far the most listed popcorn. I don't

know if that counts as a product because it's generally made there. Some movie theaters ship them in now but I know movie theater popcorn. I think so first of all so I back in my back when I used to work at serious eats this is sort of a strategy in researching this episode. I wanted to find this guy's contact information but back in the day when I was at serious eats I used to have a

contact who was a professor at the University of Iowa. I hope Indiana one of those eye places and he specifically studied popcorn and so we chatted about popcorn quite a bit and when I was at serious eats he would send me popcorn strains that he was working on that he thought were interesting and so he knew like specifically like you know like oh orville red embarkle uses like A427B he knew like with particular strains of popcorn everybody used. It was very fascinating. I tried

to find him again in my old series eats email address. It does not work anymore so I couldn't find him but if you're listening to this now please reach out to me again. I would love to talk to him more about popcorn but what I felt what I learned from him though is that when you buy popcorn at the supermarket the reason movie theater popcorn is tends to be crispy or better part of it is because

they have that the bigger equipment and they have those big specific machines designed for popping popcorn but a lot of it is that they have a strangle on that good popcorn market so like they get all the good popcorn first and so what ends up coming to the supermarkets is not as good. It's the same way that if you buy like it's harder to buy a really good steak when you're not going to like a steakhouse is because all the good steak gets sent to the steakhouses right. I read something about

that. I also read that apparently movie theater popcorn dates back to 1938 and that it was more profitable than movie theater tickets just just money. It's obviously one of the big money makers right because you buy a tub of popcorn it's 13 bucks and it costs them like for four or five cents where the. Exactly. So the movie theater popcorn that the thing that makes it taste that way is first of all they pop it in coconut oil. So there's some kind of oil but oftentimes it'll be coconut

oil. So there's a teeny bit of that sort of like underlying coconut flavor that you maybe don't notice. The main flavor of butter is this chemical called diacetyl and so they use like plain diacetyl and so like it really brings out that sort of the buttery part of butter is that chemical compound and so that's like that pure chemical compound that they sprinkle on there and that's what makes movie theater is that combination of diacetyl and coconut oil that makes movie theater popcorn

taste and smell the way that it does also obviously lots of salt. Butter popcorn is like definitely one of the best smells on earth but popcorn itself has a smell that's very appealing even without butter on it. There's very powerful aroma compounds that are also used by food and other industries to make products that smell like popcorn bread. Basically they apply the popcorn

smell to other things so that that was interesting. I don't know why these chemical compounds in particular make it smell so good but I agree that even without butter popcorn smells amazing and it's a very specific smell. But Deb should we talk about how to actually cook popcorn at home now? Yes we should. When we come back by our break we're going to talk about all the different ways you can cook popcorn on the recipe with Kenjian dad.

Welcome back to the recipe with Kenjian dad where we're talking about popcorn. And right now we're going to talk about the ways you can make popcorn at home and what the

best methods are Deb how do you make popcorn at home? I usually just use a pot with a lid I put some oil on it and that's it I just pop it but growing up we had a microwave popcorn popper that I was very fond of it was very easy it really just looks like a plastic container you know a lid and a base but it did a great job with it and it was I we never had bagged microwave popcorn.

So I think on this stove shop you've got like those cool jiffy pop things like with the foil that oh yeah with the where we're all expands which are the ones that you do like over a campfire also like the ones from the beginning of screen where which drew very much making a screen right yeah you got to get those for your kids at least once or twice they're

really fun. You said you had when you were growing up the microwave was your main method we had an air popper but we used the microwave a lot and we used we did use we did buy store-bought microwave popcorn but the way that we did it in the microwave was we'd use a like a lunch stack

like a brown paper lunch stack and you put popcorn kernels in there and then you fold it up and you take it shut and then you just put that whole thing in a microwave and then it works just like one of those bot bags you buy from the supermarket where it expands on its own and it probably tastes better as you can flavor it yourself rather than it being excessively overly salty like the bag stuff

off it is. I'm gonna go ahead and say that when it comes to popcorn I am fully team overly salty artificial butterfly like I enjoy buttered popcorn at home but I enjoy fake movie theater or like fake microwave popcorn in a very different way to the point that when I make popcorn at home I buy the stuff that makes it taste like I have flavicle which is diacetal,

but you tear it out so it's salt and I buy coconut oil so that I can add it to there. Sometimes what I'll do is I will do a little bit of clarified butter plus the flavicle but I do love that movie theater popcorn flavor and so I do that. But have you tried mentioned melting very good French salted butter and pouring it over your popcorn I'm quite a fan and then I always use fine sea salt

for popcorn because you want us to get in all the nooks and crannies. I like it so I like popcorn salty and I like it really buttery but I don't like it when I go to the movies once in a while and it's just so egregiously over salted that I can't enjoy it and I love salt. I'm not somebody who under salt speed but like once in a while it's just so aggressive that I feel like I'm gonna die if I keep eating it and that is very upsetting. Maybe East Coast theaters are different but I usually get

extra salt packets and add as I eat. That's what my husband does. And if it's a theater that doesn't have extra salt packets and they only have like little shakers of salt I'll steal one of the shakers and bring it into the theater. You don't bring your own flakey sea salt, Kenji? That's the wrong salt popcorn. You got to use a very fine salt. I don't know. I really like a good butter with taste. So speaking of butter on popcorn? I just melt it. I do not clarify it. You don't

clarify it. Okay. Why would I clarify why should I clarify butter for popcorn Kenji? I don't think you necessarily should but I think you should be aware of just like what the differences are gonna be at the end, right? So my dad when he made popcorn whether it was in the air popper usually when I was a kid he would make it in the air popper. We had this old gray air pop brown air popper from the 60s. Did it have the clear amber piece in the front and it looked

like a little R2D to or something like a rubber. And if he would microwave the butter and then he would just pour the butter straight down the popcorn. It was always a lot. It was like four tablespoons of butter for the bowl of popcorn. And the way my dad so when you do that when you just melt the butter, so butter is American butter is like what 80 to 81% fat about I think about like 15% water 12 to 15% water and then some amount of protein and whatever stuff. But is that water?

Is that like 12 to 15% of water that soaks into the popcorn right? So fat doesn't make things soggy. You could take like popcorn and dump it into a vat of oil like crisp popcorn dump it into vat of oil. Let it soak there for a day and take it out and it'll still be crispy the same way you can dump like a potato chip into a pot of oil. It'll still be crispy. It'll get greasier but

it'll still be crispy because fat doesn't like soften that Christmas. Water does this. So when you get this so my dad would make popcorn with four tablespoons of butter and so there's always a good amount of water in there and what I actually really enjoyed was as he gets towards the bottom of the bowl or every once in a while you would get one kernel that was soggy like it absorbs some of that water and so that it has this kind of soggy butter flavor to it as opposed to the crisp butter

flavor. And I like that which is and that's what you get when you don't clarify the butter but if you like your popcorn perfectly crisp with no little bits of soggy soaked in butter then that's when you should clarify your butter. Melted butter tastes better than clarified butter and I don't know why. Do we lose some of the flavor compounds when we take out the water? Oh absolutely absolutely it's not when you take out the water it's when you take out the scum the foamy protein. The brown

butter though the stuff that you would brown the milk fats. The other thing you could do is that instead when you instead of clarifying the butter you can simply you keep it gently just until the water part boils off right. Is that like when you make ghee? Exactly exactly. Exactly. Ghee is made from fermented butter. It's got like a it's got like a sourness to it. I think so. I don't know maybe I'm talking about it. I thought it was very close to clarified

butter but the milk solids are left in so it has a little bit more of a toasty flavor. I think ghee is made from the fat skim from like a yogurt. You skim fat from yogurt and then you cook that down like. Just in case we're wrong I don't want to get a lot yelled at by a lot of people for not knowing the difference between these. I think I got yelled at about this once. I'm trying to save

you from getting yelled at. Okay and I'm like I feel like I've been yelled at about it and that's why I'm saying it this way but again I don't want to be this is if it's something we could have Googled to avoid this. I did specifically get yelled at for saying that ghee was just so similar to clarified butter and people like no no you make it with this fermented yogurt that you skim off. And you add it a little out of that like it's a process that's a little different. That's what

some people I don't know either way it'll be an issue if you say not an expert. This is not my expertise but I love it and I do keep ghee around actually but I've never put it on popcorn. Ghee is great on popcorn. Ghee is excellent on popcorn. I think it has I think ghee has better flavor than clarified butter but that's just what I found. Yeah ghee has a slight brown butter flavor to it because there's proteins that are brown in there and then generally has a little bit of

complexity because it's slightly fermented. So in the same way that like it left French butter is made with was made with fermented cream like you take creme fraîche and turn that into butter and that's why it has a little bit of tanginess. So ghee is similar it's going to be made it's going to have a bit of that sort of tang from the culture. Yeah I think that's exactly what it is. So that's why I'm like wait I don't ever use clarified butter I used melted French butter good butter

yeah for my pop. There you go. Good butter the best butter. What's your go-to popcorn making method at home? I feel like are you still a big fan of the Whirly Pop? I don't have one. I've got two go-to methods. The Whirly Pop so back in the day when I was at series Eats I tested a ton of methods and what I found was that the real important so there's two things that differ when depending on what method you make right so the important parts are what yield you get so some methods will

pop a lot of the popcorns and some will leave a lot of unpopped corn kernels at the bottom and and then the other one is just a quality of that popcorn how light and crispy it is how toasty it is those two factors come down to two different things so the yield has to do with like how fast

it's heated how fast and evenly things heat and so generally actually like with a thinner pan so like a Whirly Pop the $15 Whirly Pop is made of aluminum really good at conducting heat really thin and so you start you put the Whirly Pop in there oh let's quickly say what a Whirly Pop is it's essentially a thin pot with a lid that has a little mechanism with a handle with a crank and as you turn it these two arms at the bottom of the pot spin around and all they do is agitate

the popcorn. You crank it the whole time right you're the one cranking. Yeah you're seeing a crank right yeah on the stove top and then the lid has these two kind of flaps that pop up and they ventilate really well so there's a lot of room for steam to escape. That's really hard to put on the stove top yeah you crank it it's going it heats up really quickly because it's thin aluminum and so what you find is that the popcorn pops within about a minute and all of the kernels like

from the time the first kernel kernel pops to the time the last kernel pops it'll happen within the space of 10 or 15 seconds just goes suddenly it just goes and they're all done right okay now I want to go on as opposed to a microwave which heats more unevenly or even the

stove top on a thicker pot which you'll hear like random pops here and there and then they slowly go and then what you get worried about is oh are the ones that popped at the beginning are they going to burn before the ones at the bottom pop and so you end up taking it out early and you get a bunch of unpopcorn so that's one of the advantages of a Whirly Pop. You open it up to see if it's done and then a couple blow up in your face from the bottom and they take all the popcorn that was

on top of it with it. Just something I've noticed once or twice by cooking like so the Whirly Pop do you put butter or oil in the Whirly Pop? I put oil in it and then once everything's popped I'll then I'll put in whatever toppings if it's just clarified butter if it's you know coconut oil diacetyl whatever is I'll put it in there and I'll give it a few cranks to distribute it. The other great thing about a Whirly Pop is though is that it ventilates better than any other

cooking method I've tested. If you like weigh the popcorn when it starts and then you weigh the popcorn after it comes out there's some amount of moisture that's lost through the steam you know the exploding steam comes out but there's still going to be steam coming off that popcorn for a while and as long as the steam coming off of it it's still going to be a little bit soggy.

So if you ever take a popcorn straight out of your pot and right when it pops if you eat it they actually have a little bit of chew to them but then maybe 10 minutes later they get really crispy. A Whirly Pop gives you crispy popcorn right off the bat you can it's really it's really good at getting that that air that water vapor out of there so your popcorn for an island of really

messing crispy. I think the plug and air poppers are like that too they're very good at getting the they don't I would they probably trap more steam than the Whirly Pop does but less than any kind of stowtop or microwave method. The air popper they trap they actually are very good they're on par with the Whirly Pop maybe even a little bit better about getting rid of steam because they're basically like blowing the fan blowing with the steam constantly and then the kernels are flying

through the air and the good thing about the air poppers that as soon as the pop is a kernels done it leaves so it doesn't burn but one of the issues we found with the air popper though is that your yield is not as good because first of all you have to use a significant amount there's a minimum

amount of popcorn you need to put in there in order for it to an air popper to work if you put too little the kernels just blow out and then what you find is that at the end like the maybe the last 50 kernels or so 40 to 50 kernels they're so light that they just blow out and also the popcorn is if popping it takes some unpopped kernels out with them so the air popper actually is a really poor yield good quality popcorn but poor yield on the air popper that was the issue there.

I always thought it was the popcorn I was using with some brands or better than others but it makes sense because it is pulling the unpopped kernels with it so though it's a pretty good method like it comes up pretty crispy you're not running a stove it like I feel safe with my kids using it like they could plug it in and not I think I don't think they could do too much damage.

They get pretty hot that they're coming up the milk plastic but yeah no not not it's not like there's not like a hot surface they can touch unless they shove their hand down in it. Exactly it's not a gas flame going on. So as long as you talk them like not to stick their hand into a blender you can teach them not to stick their hand into the popcorn popper. I mean I've taught

them I've taught them this it has come out of my mouth. My other method yeah one that I've been using more frequently now and it's not just because I wrote on the book a book on the subject I wrote a book on the subject because it's so good at things like this but

the walk like walk corn is my current method for popcorn. The advantages of using a walk for popcorn first of all there's mainly in the shape like a walk in the same way that when you stir fry stir frying is designed to eliminate excess moisture stir frying is a very high heat dry process and the shape of the walk is really good for getting moisture to different dissipate and vapor to dissipate and for heating like a large amount of small pieces of food evenly. So it's

like ideal for popcorn for popcorn. It's also it flares out and so you have a small amount of popcorn in the bottom and there's plenty of room for a digspan and as it expands unlike in a tall narrow western style pop where everything just stacks on top of itself and a walk everything comes out wide and so there's a lot more room for moisture and vapor to come out and it also makes it really easy to season and flavor your popcorn. So what I do is I put some oil in the bottom of the walk

I heated up on stovetop I put a wooden lid on it I wait for all the pop the lid. Yeah I got a wooden lid for my walk and then you just shake it back and forth just like you would on stovetop walks tend to be a lot thinner than western cans because they are designed for like really rapid

and fast cooling and just like a whirlie pop as long as you're twirling it swirling around they will pop really quickly and evenly and then when you take off the lid like all the steam really quickly dissipates and you can take your flavor and sprinkle it in there toss it as you as if you're stir frying and I find the walk to be a very convenient and easy method. The final advantage of a

walk and a whirlie pop is that because they're so thin they don't retain a lot of heat. I find if I use like a stainless steel pan or like a cloud pan and I'm cooking popcorn in it when I take it off the stovetop the retained heat can end up like burning the stuff at the bottom whereas in a whirlie pop or a walk that doesn't have any. I mean I'm usually dumping it in a bowl right away but that I could see right now and be concerned if you were serving it out of the pot. All right so

you're putting your flavorings on. I think you like the movie theater flavor butter I use regular butter but do you have any other toppings you like for your popcorn anything weird or unusual or fun we should be trying. Let's see our our go-to's are Furi Kake we love Furi Kake but generally just butter like butter and salt is really our go-to but we will do Furi Kake sometimes we like to sprinkle it with some cheese like we'll sprinkle cheese on it um

Parmesan or Romano. I've enjoyed popcorn where so sometimes what we do is we'll fry little bits of Spanish chorizo you know to render out the fat so we cut into really small diced and you fry it so you get these little crispy bits of chorizo and then you take that chorizo fat and that seasons the popcorn also and that is excellent love that but I imagine it would taste good with bacon or

whatever cured fatty pork product you want to pop pepperoni popcorns also great. My favorite and you like I guess unusual it is but it used to be at a tabla restaurant which was one of my favorite restaurants for many years years in the 2000s in New York. Who's places that was that

Floyd Cardo's? Floyd Cardo's who unfortunately passed away a few years ago before his time I was really sad anyway but he they used to have a bar popcorn and it was amazing and I every time I remember this always I was obsessed with it I would ask and as they finally were like Deb. Did you get the rest? It's Chot Masala. It's like the MDH brand like the classic one

they buy these spice. I think they would use a mix of ghee and chow I don't know if they were I don't want to like insult them if they were I think I'm pretty sure one of the waiters was like yeah it's Chot Masala it's the MDH brand and so it started buying it and I think they would blend it with a couple other spices but it is so good so their Chot Masala popcorn was one of my favorite things because it's salty and a little spicy and you get that like a real just such a nuanced

tangy fragrant popcorn and it went so well with the cocktail. Definitely my favorite hot all time. I feel like India is just like is really good with like salty crispy street snacks type stuff that makes a ton of sense yeah. I was thinking that with like Belpore is when we were talking about puffed grains earlier that's made with puffed rice and there's so many crunchy salty, giant type snacks and I love them all I could happily eat my way to the entire country

of street snacks. Have you ever done ramen seasoning on popcorn? No that sounds great. Then what do you do with your ramen? I did like this I did this thing for a cup of Joe many years ago where like she she encouraged me to walk around a bodega and talk about the different things I like to buy there and I'm like have you ever put ramen seasoning on popcorn it's quite salty but it's really good. Obviously it's going to depend on the yeah it's very salty. It's really good.

That sounds excellent I will definitely try that yeah that sounds great. I've also made some beard popcorns in my second cookbook smitten kitchen every day I have a recipe for kale and tecarino popcorn and that actually started because there was a few years there were kale chips were really in right right right and the first time I made them I was like this is like

the worst thing I've ever tasted in my life. Really? I love kale chips. I anger but I just met like in general I must have upset somebody in my last life that it tastes so bad and so I ground it into powder in a mortar and pestle and I use that as I don't know is it like pure cacchia? Yeah little less season so I use that and then I use some pecorino I usually pop the popcorn in olive oil so it's like this olive oil black pepper pecorino kale dust kind of thing and it's fun.

You definitely get a it definitely falls off a bit but the stuff that lands on the popcorn is spectacular. That's one of my weird popcorn recipes I've got a lot more of that came from. What about like cooking with popcorn? I have a recipe for buttered popcorn cookies in my first cookbook and I had and made them and so long I made them last week getting ready for this episode.

It's a really fun recipe where I start where I you know I walk you through how to make buttered popcorn but the truth is that a bag of microwave popcorn or a bag of purchased buttery popcorn is fantastic there because you get that perfect pop no half kernels or anything like that but you it's basically like a chocolate chip cookie base minus the chocolate chips so it's vanilla salt butter brown sugar and then you put put in this like slightly extra buttered popcorn and you basically just

yeah you bake the cookies it's really fun I love the flavor I love the interplay of popcorn butter salt and vanilla and brown sugar is so good together it's not on my website though. Deb this reminds me of this product I used to try it seriously so do you remember Robin Lee she

worked at series for her? I do she was so fun. Yeah Robin was great she was our photographer and one of our excellent writers but Robin her her boyfriend now a husband I believe was from Norway and so she would bring back Norwegian treats and one of them was this chocolate called it's a

brand called Freya but they make like a milk chocolate bar that has popcorn in it and it is so good like the popcorn it so it has half pop kernels it has like little chunks of like the sort of it feels like almost like the you know like the corn nuts in there and then it's like salt so you bite it

and it's salty and crunchy and chocolatey and it's so good and I'm not I haven't had it since my series each days because I haven't been able to get a maybe I should call up Robin you guys could have shipped me some but I need this for me what not you me get her to send me some sure barely

nowhere but that's okay that sounds amazing have you ever made caramel popcorn because that was definitely I did I have a dad two things is that tar on popcorn excellent okay and then the other one fried sage leaves and you put like stems in the pot with the popcorn when you're popping the

popcorn but yeah fried sage leaves crumbled up in the house on the popcorn or even this like left hole but in that aroma they're really like okay I could see that can I still butter it like to I still butter it all to hell and butter whatever you want that sage and butter would be really good

yeah I'm gonna stop you from buttering whatever you feel like I've also done a checks mix where I use the popcorn instead of the checks so it's basically those flavors like the butter the spices the Worcestershire all the stuff that you'd put in a checks mix plus the pretzels but I use it with

popcorn because popcorn's my favorite thing and glad we can at least agree that popcorn is exactly that's really good that we don't agree on how to make it or how to flavor it or even what the best pop right if you're making me popcorn in a walk I'm thrilled or if you have a really pop I just

don't know that I am going to get a whirlie pop got it in my small kitchen got it we're all good how about we say how about we say I will never turn down popcorn from you and you will never turn down popcorn for me never turn down popcorn don't good I will never I just said I never turn down popcorn

but yes from you all right have you ever I haven't done this before but I've seen people do this I have a recipe for salted brown butter rice crispy treats like very I've seen I mean I know they're all over the internet but I swear I did it first that's a be that person I know I am pretty sure

no I believe you did it a very long time ago anyway because I'm an old person on the internet yes I see people make it with popcorn instead of rice crispies and I have not done that but I feel like that would be exceptional you would get the brown butter you'd get the marshmallows you'd get

the salt and then you get the popcorn I'm going to do this tonight you have a bunch of marshmallows around you we have a bag of marshmallows and we have some fancy popcorn you're last year for for Christmas my daughter bought me like one of those like those sets that have

24 different types of popcorn in them of all different colors so we have some fancy popcorn and we're gonna do it can you to wrap up do you think you could waffle popcorn what if you use one of those deep pocketed Belgian waffle irons and you put some just a few kernels in you need

other stuff in there right I don't think you can just take plain popcorn and stick it in the sofa less of a less less popcorn is like you need a ratio of popcorn to say waffle batter no but I bet you could take like waffle batter and stick popcorn in there and waffle it and that

would be excellent I bet that would be good my buddy Harold Dieterlie who just opened up a new restaurant in in Brooklyn he was the winner of top chefs at season one and in one episode if you won by making they had to cook out of a convenience store he won by making a little popcorn cake

making popcorn yet we should turn to Harold's ask how do you reuse leftover popcorn does a taco depth do you think popcorn tacos I think listen anything can be put inside a taco but I don't think that I would necessarily taco popcorn unless you were using it as a full crunchy seasoning topping

on maybe a corn taco you could have fun with the flavors for sure what I mean that I you know you've popcorn or roasted like large primal corn is a very common accompaniment to ceviche right and Peru okay and I feel like you could do I feel like there's probably some modern chef who is

going and stealing food from other cultures and shoving ceviche into a taco into a taco and topping it with popcorn and I bet it tastes good I got better so type of restaurant that I wouldn't want to know too but I bet it does taste good I have no idea that popcorn is often served

ceviche I've just grew up on it now and I've totally missed that yeah it's such a great idea it's like the perfect accompaniment to ceviche also it gives you everything that the ceviche doesn't like all the it's just soft and tart whereas popcorn is crispy and crunchy and daddy can you can you

fry popcorn and butter in a pan I've never tried it but I am actually really curious to try that what would happen if you take already popped popcorn and then you just melted some butter in a skillet and you pop you put the popcorn and you just saute it like you were like you were trying to

crisp up some some chunks of cherry so something could you re-crisp popcorn and get it to sort of controlled level of brownness that would make it taste interesting or different and would it make something like mushroom popcorn have a more interesting texture because it otherwise is solid but

not very crispy that would be my choice for sauteing in a pan yeah that could be just popcorn leftover Kenji this popcorn left or I've rarely I rarely had leftover popcorn although I say that and I'm looking over at my kitchen counter and there's leftover popcorn there right now

no because I made a bunch last night after the kids were asleep because I wanted to like test a couple things before we record this episode so there's popcorn sitting over there right now so that means I get to go and I get to go and fry some later yeah and then I think the last question was

sorry does it come easily out of kids clothes as well is that anybody does butter does not come easily out of kids blood and butter wants it soaks into fabrics I find it real hard to get it like that that's a stain that just pops up again and again even after it comes out of the out of the wash

do you ever use dish soap having like mom tips for laundry I've been helps a little bit not always all right let's get to know that's our popcorn episode let me tell you about one of my movie theater popcorn experiences to demonstrate my utter devotion to popcorn even to the extent of you know

physically causing myself harm when I was 11 years old my uncle took me to see robo cop 2 which was definitely not a movie I was allowed to see and while we were in there he also bought me like a bottomless tub of popcorn which is also saying I definitely wasn't allowed to do but I finished the

whole tub and then I went and got a second one and I finished that whole tub and then like towards the end of the movie all that popcorn came right up into the bucket and for some reason the butter smell got intensified it smelled like the it smelled like the movie theater lobby once

again because I brought all this butter to the theater wow did that put you off popcorn for any amount of time no I went right back in I ate more popcorn that day okay thanks you're really like can't you say my my goal today is to ruin popcorn for dad than everyone listening

that's it for today's episode is there another recipe or food you want us to chat about tell us at the recipe podcast dot com or on socials at Kenji and Deb or you can call us leave us a message at 202 709 7607 the recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Proman and Jay Kenji Lopez

Alt our producers are Jotling Gonzalez, Perry Gregory and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions Edwin Ochoa is the project manager the executive producer for radio topia is Audrey Mardevich and Yuri Lasardo is the director of network operations a pucote a manual Johnson and

Mike Russo handle our social media we'll see you next time on the recipe with Deb and Kenji we're excited to tell you about another great podcast called the Splendid Table for almost 30 years the Splendid Table has been bringing people together through the common

language of food hosted every week by the James Beard award winning writer my friend Francis Lamb they bring us fresh voices and surprising insights at the intersection of food, people and culture everything from the local food scene in Los Angeles to the impact of Tiktok on what we eat to how to make a perfect hard boiled egg we've both been deaths on the show so you can start by checking out our episodes you can find the Splendid Table in your favorite podcast app