When I think back on the formative moments of my youth, it’s hard to top the Canada-Wide Science Fair of 1980. It was there, in Thompson, Manitoba, that I first truly experienced the transformative power of science to make daily life richer, better, more rewarding. No, it wasn’t my own engagement with the scientific method and R&D – sure, the physically accurate cloud simulation device my sister and I designed and constructed was nifty, and the experience helped shape my future education and blah blah blah. But it was the junior science on display in the booth next to ours that really changed the future for me.
I don’t remember his name, and I can’t recall where he was from. But I do remember his schematics almost well enough to sketch them for a patent application. Our neighbor’s popcorn popping optimization research went on to win first place in our division, and deservedly so. By painstakingly varying a score of conditions, from oil type and volume and preheat time to advanced notions such as pre-soaking the kernels and using a pressure cooker, my adversary simultaneously anticipated and outdid the Cook’s Illustrated trial and error approach to kitchen science. (The magazine launched the same year.)
I’ve used my own adaptation of his method, to rave reviews, throughout the decades since, so in a way I was the bigger winner after all. (I very much doubt he has simulated any clouds.) I tell you all this simply to establish that when it comes to popcorn, I know what’s going on. I’m a stove-top popcorn pro. And yet my facility with the kernel didn’t make me fat: vastly inferior pre-popped corn in a bag did. I don’t really like the stuff, it’s way overpriced, and I just can’t stop eating it. Am I a victim of food science?
There’s a meme floating around the food and diet world that goes something like this: In the Olden Times, food was just food. Then big companies came along, after World War II, and started turning it into addictive junk. They subverted the Western diet with an alchemical brew of powerfully addictive chemicals and tricked us into loving it with the potent mind control tactics of incessant advertising, low prices, and chemically enhanced mouth feel. We were made into so many foie-gras geese, oblivious to the endless gobs of unhealthful things the big food companies were secreting into our increasingly processed comestibles, and utterly unable to stop eating them. The obesity epidemic is not our fault, in other words: food science made us do it.
That’s both true, and utter nonsense. Modern food science has achieved some pretty spectacular things over the last 60 years or so. And I’m not just talking about pop rocks and aerosol spray cheese. But my waistline and my palate agree: the food science advances that have helped so many of us get fat in recent decades have nothing to do with the food itself (it’s usually not as good a fresher alternatives), what it contains (my home popcorn has plenty of melted butter and salt) or even how it is marketed (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bagged popcorn ad. But google will probably start serving them to me now). It doesn’t even really have much to do with how much Salt, Sugar and Fat are in it, in the words of a recent (and actually very good) book on the subject.
For me, at least, the most — the only — seductive quality of bagged popcorn is convenience. No oily pot to clean after; no lingering odor the next morning (so the kids don’t know I was snacking without them); no more effort to “make” it at the end of a grueling day of helping college students say things better and chasing toddlers into bed than snipping open an airtight bag.
And O, what a bag! To my mind, packaging and the other tricks that keep food shelf-stable and available at a moment’s notice are the truly devilish inventions of food science. Fat, sugar and salt we’ve had forever. But constantly within reach with zero effort? That is new indeed. Bagged popcorn isn’t better than fresh, it’s not cheaper and the way I make it, it certainly doesn’t have more butter or salt. It’s just so darned available, it almost becomes inevitable.
Fresh popcorn starts to loose its awesomeness within an hour or two [of popping]. Bagged popcorn starts out mediocre, but then stays that way without deterioration for six months or more. I don’t think popcorn is packed with a modified atmosphere, the way meat and fresh fruits and vegetables often are. But it doesn’t matter: the heat-sealed sacks of metalized, oriented polypropylene film keep out moisture, oxygen and sunlight better than any mummy-preserving high Andes grave site ever did. Stash a bale of the stuff in your utility closet in the fall, and you’ll have a happier winter than a squirrel with a hollow log full of acorns.
Until spring comes, of course, and you look like a woodchuck just getting ready to hibernate.
That’s where I am now. So maybe it’s a good sign that I made popcorn the old-fashioned way again last week, for the first time in months. My three-year-old and I waited together as the oil rippled and just started to smoke in the bottom of the pot; we poured the kernels in and leaped back, away from the splatter. We waited, and flinched together when the expected first kernel popped, and squealed and giggled a little as I clapped the pot lid down. It was an earnest and satisfying treat: warm and richly aromatic, with melted butter and just a touch of salt, as different from the sterile starchy matrix of bagged popcorn as a fresh ear of fire-roasted spring corn is from a handful of cornmeal.
Eating fresh-popped corn isn’t going to make me fit again. But it didn’t make me fat, and food science didn’t either. I blame the bag.
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Photo: Popcorn Kernels, by flickr user ccharmon
I need to know how to make fresh popcorn right now. I have a special turny-handle vented-lid popcorn pan thing, oil, and a bag of kernels I’ve had a couple of months old at least.
Are you serious when you say they go bad after a few days? How am I supposed to use that many kernels in two days? I guess it’s probably still cheaper than microwaveable popcorn even if I chuck half of it away but not by as much :/
I just wondered if you had advice about how to make it go well. Also how to flavour it. I especially like salted popcorn, or maybe butter.
My popcorn is always smaller and harder and not as delicious as microwaveable.
William, I’ll answer you because I’m awake and Tom’s probably still sleeping. I learned on that turny-handle, vented-lid thing. Put in a couple or 3 kernels, get the oil hot and spattery but not smoking and at that time, the kernels will have popped. Put in the rest of the kernels. Keep the heat high and turn that turny thing. Once the popping seems to have peaked, turn the heat down a bit, keep turning until the popping slacks off drastically or the pan is so full you can’t turn it any more.
Salt and/or butter at will; I do “and,” not “or.” If you want to make yourself sick but enjoy doing it: squeeze garlic and a little cayenne into the butter, cover the hot popcorn with grated cheddar cheese, pour the hot butter/garlic/cayenne over the cheese which is over the popcorn.
Yellow popcorn is larger and puffier than white; I used to think white tasted better but I don’t any more. You can keep the kernels for months, just seal them against moisture. I think Tom was saying that the popped popcorn doesn’t keep well, not the kernels; I wouldn’t know because I eat it ALL UP RIGHT AWAY.
Wow, sounds like Ann has some skills, too! William, you’ll do great following her advice. And yes, I meant freshly popped popcorn starts not being as great quickly – the dry kernels themselves will last for a long, long time with no change in quality. Oh, and I definitely agree on yellow being better than white for popping.
Mmmm…. garlic goes good on anything.
I also discovered a retro way to make microwave popcorn. We lack a microwave in the house we just moved into, but someone gave us a bag of microwave popcorn. In a fit of desperate popcorn craving, I ripped the bag open, scraped off the yucky innards, spooned it into a pot and popped it the old fashioned way. It was satisfying to subvert the system, but it still tasted like wave-popcorn.
By the way, humans aren’t the only ones who love the smell of microwave popcorn. I once unwittingly lured a very large black bear onto the deck of the cabin where my husband and I were staying in Jasper National Park. Only a thin screen door separated us, as my husband and I sat on a couch, munching popcorn and the bear stood on his haunches, trying to decide whether to barge in. Fortunately my husband had the presence of mind to dash into the kitchen and start beating pots and pans together. Exit bear.
Thanks Ann and Thomas! Great advice, I’ll try it out at the earliest opportunity.
Psst. These things rock: http://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-60120-Microwaver-Popcorn/dp/B00004W4UP
Popcorn! I love it! My sister and I are bonded in this. I always make it stovetop, in olive oil, with salt and no butter, which is a yummy and relatively low guilt way to do it.
But, Tom, please share your secrets and any results you remember from your colleague’s experiment. Pre-soaking? Pressure cooker? What happened?
It’s not that corn kernals “go bad”, it’s that they dry out if kept too long in a dry environment. The thing that makes the kernals explode is the pressure of steam inside the enclosed space of the kernal as the moisture in the kernal heats up. No moisture inside the kernal, no pop. Just dry duds. Buy them as fresh as you can (some farmers sell popping corn at farm markets), seal them tightly with no air inside to preserve the corn juice, and freeze them until you are ready to go. Let them come to room temperature and pop away.
I never put salt on anything >_< , but I use a variety of toppings including: olive oil, grated Romano cheese, dried garlic, powdered kelp, grated pepper, powdered tomato, dried onion – but not all at the same time! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!