The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Popcorn

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Kenji and Deb are major, MAJOR fans of popcorn — “God’s gift to snacking” (two guesses who said that). One might actually call them a miracle of science. How does a hard af, yellow pebble turn into a fluffy white edible cloud? How does movie popcorn butter smell so heavenly without any butter? This is Popcornology 101, class is now in session.

Hi, it's me, Jesse Tyler Ferguson. In case you haven't heard, and I don't know how that's possible, you're obviously not seeing my Instagram stories, but I have a podcast. I know, I know, I know. I didn't think there was enough podcasts, especially podcasts hosted by actors. So here I am. It's called Dinner's on Me, and it's actually pretty special to me. It combines two things that I absolutely love, eating and connecting with people. So in each episode, I take an old friend or a new friend out to a fabulous meal and as we break bread,

we dive into everything from imposter syndrome and mental health to being a new parent navigating new relationships. It's fun because you truly get to be a fly on the wall for some really intimate conversations. So please pull up a chair, join us. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I wanna hear your popcorn stories. Well, I wanna ask you, are you a popcorn lover?

I am a popcorn enthusiast. I love popcorn. It is my favorite snack. I used to make you, are you a popcorn lover? I am a popcorn enthusiast. I love popcorn. It is my favorite snack. I used to make it after school. Yeah. What was your after school snack? My after school snack was popcorn and do you know why? Why? Specifically because my mom would give us 50 cents after school every day to go to the corner store.

It was called Farrell's by my high school. We'd go to the corner store. 50 cents was enough to buy one bag of chips or two bags of Wise popcorn. Buttered 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.

And 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. And then my dad was trying to convince her that it was okay for us to stay up. And I remember him like arguing with her that I should be watching this movie. And really I was just sitting there like 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 he would not clarify the butter. So some of the pieces would get that kind of a sogginess that they get when the water part of the clarified butter gets into them. And so you get those few popcorn kernels that are like really soaked and soggy with butter. And I actually enjoy those. And so you get those few popcorn kernels that are like really soaked and soggy with butter.

And I actually enjoy those. And so you get those few popcorn kernels that are like really soaked and soggy with butter. And I actually enjoy those. From PRX's Radiotopia, 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 a columnist 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. Kenji, why did we decide to do an episode devoted to popcorn? Because popcorn is the world's greatest snack. It is God's gift to snacking. I fully agree. It world's greatest snack. It is God's gift to snacking. I fully agree. It is my favorite snack. It is also the reason why melted butter was invented.

Perhaps. I know. 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 used to be made with melted butter. There's no butter in movie theater popcorn.

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 perusal of Wikipedia before we begin, we know that corn was domesticated 10,000 years ago,

but I thought it was interesting that there was domesticated 10,000 years ago, but I thought it was interesting that there was evidence of popcorn, like actually popped corn in Peru 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. It must have been discovered accidentally. You know, like all the dishes... Like someone left it out in the sun or something

and it got a little bit too hot? Exactly. But you know, like all the great food 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 imagine having some dried corn lying around and being like, what just happened, man? They happen to have some dried corn, some very fine salt, and some melted butter lager.

Maybe. But it got much bigger when we had a popcorn maker invented in the 1890s. It was this guy named Charles Kreeter, and he was a candy store owner, and he created a number of steam-powered machines for 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? The way it works is 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 inside, of moisture inside turns to 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 it's the same way that you would get things like puffed rice or puffed, all those breakfast cereals that are puffed, they're all made it's 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 popped kernels at the bottom. Really? Do you like those half popped kernels at the bottom of popcorn? I do. I don't like the fully unpopped kernels, but I love the half-popped kernels, the 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. 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 lighter, sort of 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 the like the half pop ones are delicious. And then sometimes in the bigger brand, the half pop ones just taste like unpleasantly shell-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 had those weird little games in them and like prizes? They're certainly the most sung about one. Yeah, Cracker Jack. Did you ever get this used to,

there was always some girl in my summer camp bunk 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 that do it, but it's these giant tins of popcorn with't know if it's Garrett, Indiana brand, or there's a lot of brands that do it, but it's these giant tins of 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. Oh, great, and they're like absurdly expensive, right? I don't know, I wasn't buying them when I was a kid. I was eating them. I didn't know what money was. 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 opposed to snowflake popcorn. I actually meant to pick some of that up before this episode because it's such beautiful popcorn. It's 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.

So 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 bread 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 sphere, 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 caught in the cracks. That's why they choose that popcorn specifically. We should clarify that there's no mushrooms in mushroom. I think it's a mushroom.

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 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 in a bowl, but it's not the most interesting tasting popcorn. It doesn't have a lot of crunch.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Mushroom popcorn, it needs that kind of like candy shell or whatever. It needs 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

that is not homemade, of course, is I love Smart Food popcorn. You know I'm gonna work in 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 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 H cheddar flavor or Parmesan flavor, if you smell them the wrong way or in the wrong frame of mind, they have a kind of vomit smell to them? Are you going to ruin this for me? Don't ruin my favorite snack, Kenji. That's the butyric acid. Butyric acid is the smell of vomit. It's also like one of the main smells in parmesan cheese and cheddar cheese.

Stop. Go open your bag of smart food and think about vomit and smell. No, you can't make me do this. I love it and you're not going to take this away from me. It's interesting. 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 Amy's Mac and Cheese. She had a vision. Oh, okay. Did I miss any great popcorn products? My great popcorn product is movie theater popcorn. That's by far the best place to get 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 tragedy. 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, Idaho, Indiana, one of those I places. And he specifically studied popcorn. And so we chatted about popcorn quite a bit. And when I was at Sirius Heats, 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 Redenbacher uses like A427B. He knew like which particular strains

of popcorn everybody used. It was very fascinating. I tried to find him again in my old serious 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 you more about popcorn. But what I learned from him though,

is that when you buy popcorn at the supermarket, the reason movie theater popcorn is, tends to be crispier and better. Part of it is because they have that 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 steak house 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. It's just funny. 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 four or five cents worth of kernels. Exactly. So the movie theater popcorn, the thing that makes it taste that way is first of popcorn, it's 13 bucks, and it costs them like four or five cents worth of kernels.

So the movie theater popcorn, 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 I thought 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. It's a very specific smell.

But Deb, should we talk about how to actually cook popcorn at home now? Yes, we should. but I agree that even without butter, popcorn smells amazing. 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 for our break, we're going to talk about all the different ways you can cook popcorn on The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Welcome back to The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, where we're talking about popcorn today. 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 in 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 to use. 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, we never had bagged microwave popcorn. So I think on the stove top, you've got like those cool Jiffy Pop things, like with the foil that- Oh yeah, with the, where it all expands, which the ones that you do like over a campfire also. Like the ones from the, from the beginning of scream, where, which Drew Barrymore's making at the beginning of Scream, right?

You gotta 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. We did buy store-bought microwave popcorn, but the way that we did it in the microwave was we'd use a lunch sack, like a brown paper lunch sack. And you put popcorn kernels in there, and then you fold it up and you tape it shut, and then you just put that whole thing in a microwave. And then it works just like one of those spot bags

you buy from the supermarket where it expands on its own. And it probably tastes better, because you can flavor it yourself rather than it being excessively overly salty, like the bag stuff often is. I'm gonna go ahead and say that when it comes to popcorn, I am fully team overly salty artificial butter flavor. Like I enjoy butter 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 flavor call, which is diacetyl butyric acid salt. And I buy coconut oil so that I could add it to that. Sometimes what I'll do is I will do a little bit of clarified butter plus the flavor call,

but I do love that movie theater popcorn flavor and so I do that. But have you tried melting very good French salted butter and pouring it over your popcorn? I'm quite a fan. Then I always use fine sea salt for popcorn because you want it to get in all the nooks and crannies. 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 undersalt food, but like once in a while, it's just so aggressive that I feel like I'm going to 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. If it's a theater that doesn't have extra salt packets and they only have little shakers of salt, I'll steal one of the shakers and bring it into the theater.

You don't bring your own flaky sea salt, Kenji. That's the wrong salt for popcorn. You got to use a very fine salt. I don't know, I really like a good butter taste. Speaking of butter on popcorn. I just smelt it. I don't know, I really like a good butter taste. So speaking of butter on popcorn. I just smelt 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 like gray hair popper, brown air popper from the 60s. Did it have the clear amber piece in the front and it looked like a... It looked like a little R2-D2 or something, like a robot from Star Wars. Yeah, exactly. And he would microwave the butter and then he would just pour the butter straight on the popcorn. It was always a lot. It was like four tablespoons of butter for a 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 it's that water, it's that like 12 to 15% of water that soaks into the popcorn, right? So fat doesn't make things soggy. You can take like popcorn and dump it into a vat of oil, like crisp popcorn, dump it into a 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, like crisp popcorn, dump it into a 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 crispness. Water does though. 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's absorbed 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. No, it's not when you take out the water,

it's when you take out the scum, the foamy protein. The brown butter, the stuff that you would brown. The milk fats, milk solids. The other thing you could do is that instead of clarifying the butter, you can simply heat it gently just until the water part boils off. Right? Is that like when you make ghee? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Ghee is made from fermented butter. It's got like a sourness to it. I think so. 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 skimmed from like a yogurt. You skim fat from yogurt and then you cook that down.

Just in case we're wrong, I don't want to get yelled at by a lot of people for not knowing the difference between these two. 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...

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 are like, no, you make it with this fermented yogurt that you skim off, and you add it a little at a time. 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 it. Not an expert. I, 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 lightly fermented.

So in the same way that like a French butter is made with fermented cream, like you would take creme fraiche 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 use melted French butter, good butter. Yeah.

For my popcorn. 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 got two go-to methods. The Whirly Pop, so back in the day,

when I was at Serious Eats, I tested a ton of methods. And what I found was that the real importance, so there's two things that differ depending on what method you make, right? So the important parts are what yields you get. So some methods will pop a lot of the popcorns and some will leave a lot of unpop corn kernels at the bottom.

And then the other one is just the 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 put the Whirly Pop in there. 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 still cranking it. Yeah, on the stovetop. 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. So essentially you put it on the stovetop. 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 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 fast 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 gonna 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 in my cooking life.

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, then I'll put in whatever toppings. So if it's just clarified butter, if it's coconut oil, diacetyl, whatever it 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 that it ventilates better than any other cooking method I've tested. If you 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.

It explodes and the steam comes out. But there's still gonna be steam coming off that popcorn for a while. And as long as there's steam coming off of it, it's still going to be a little bit soggy. So if you ever take popcorn straight out of your pot and right when it pops, if you eat it, they actually have a little bit of a chew to them.

But then maybe 10 minutes later, they get really crispy. A Whirly Pop gives you crispy popcorn right off the bat. It's really good at getting that water vapor out of there. So your popcorn kernels end up really nice and crispy. I think the plug-in air poppers are like that too. They're very good at getting the... They probably trap more steam than the Whirly Pop does, but less than any kind of stovetop 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 Popper is that as soon as the kernel is 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 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 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 maybe the last 50 kernels or so, 40 to 50 kernels, they're so light that they just blow out. And also the popcorn, as it's popping, it takes some on pop 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 where some brands are better than others, but it makes sense, because it is pulling the unpop kernels with it. Still though, it's a pretty good method. Like it comes out pretty crispy. You're not running a stove. 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, hot enough to melt plastic. But yeah, no, it's not like, there's not like a hot surface they can touch unless they shove their hand down in there. Exactly, exactly. It's not a gas flame going or anything like that.

As long as you've taught them like not to stick their hand into a blender, you can teach them not to stick their hand into a popcorn popper. I've taught them, I've taught them this. It has come out of my mouth. My other method, and the one that I've been using more frequently now, and it's not just

because I wrote a book on the subject. I wrote a book on the subject because it's so good at things like this, but the wok, like wok corn is my current method for popcorn. The advantages of using a wok for popcorn, first of all, is mainly in the shape, like a wok, 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 wok is really good for getting moisture to 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. 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 it to expand. And as it expands, unlike in a tall, narrow, Western style pot where everything just stacks on top of itself, on a wok 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 wok, I heat it up on the stovetop, I put a wooden lid on it, I wait for all the pop in the pot. I was gonna ask about the lid. Yeah, I got a wooden lid for my wok,

and then you just shake it back and forth, just like you would on the stovetop. Woks tend to be a lot thinner than Westin pans because they are designed for like really rapid and fast cooling. And just like a Whirly Pop, as long as you're twirling it, swirling it 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 flavoring, sprinkle it in there,

toss it as if you're stir-frying. And I don't know, I find the wok to be a very convenient and easy method. You know, the final advantage of a wok and a Whirly 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 stove top,

the retained heat can end up like burning the stuff at the bottom. Whereas in a Whirly Pop or a wok, that doesn't happen. Anyhow. I mean, I'm usually dumping it in a bowl right away, but I could see why that would be a concern, 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 go-tos are furikake. We love furikake. But generally just butter, like butter and salt is really our go-to. Butto's are furikake. We love furikake. But generally just butter, like butter and salt is really our go-to, but we will do furikake.

Sometimes we like to sprinkle it with some cheese. Like we'll sprinkle cheese on it, 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 it into really small dice 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 do. Pepperoni popcorn is also great. My favorite, 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 in the 2000s in New York. Whose place was that? Was that Floyd Cardo's? Floyd Cardo's, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago before his time. It was really sad. Anyway, but they used to have a bar popcorn, and it was amazing. And I, every time I went, we would always,

I was obsessed with it. I would ask, and as they finally were like, Deb, it's chaat masala. It's chaat masala. It's like the MDH brand, like the classic one, they buy these spice packets. I think they would use a mix of ghee and, 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 Chop 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 chaat 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 cocktails. Definitely one of my favorite popcorns of all time. That makes me laugh, I love that. Just, yeah, I feel like India is just like, is really good with salty, crispy street snacks type stuff. Exactly. That makes a ton of sense, yeah, I feel like India is just like, is really good with salty, crispy street snacks type stuff. Exactly. That makes a ton of sense, yeah.

I was thinking that with like bell puris, when we were talking about puffed grains earlier, that's made with puffed rice, and there's so many crunchy, salty, chant type snacks, and I love them all. I could happily eat my way through the entire country of street snacks. Oh, have you ever done ramen seasoning on popcorn?

No, but that sounds great. Then, 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 Cup of Joe many years ago where like 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 packet

on popcorn? It's quite salty, but it's really good. Obviously it's gonna depend on the, yeah. It's very salty, but it's really good. That sounds excellent. I on the, yeah, it's very salty, but it's really good. That sounds excellent. I will definitely try that. Yeah, that sounds great. I've also made some weird popcorns in my second cookbook,

Smitten Kitchen Every Day. I have a recipe for kale and pecorino popcorn. And that actually started because there was a few years there where kale chips were really in. 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 juice. Like, who did I anger? But I just meant like, in general, I must have upset somebody in my last life that it tastes so bad.

And so I ground it into a powder in a mortar and pestle. And I use that as, I don't know, is it like, furikake? Like, hippie furikake? Yeah, a little less seasoned. 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 hadn't made them in 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 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 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 at Serious Seats. Do you remember Robin Lee?

She worked at Serious Seats for a while? I do. She was so fun. Yeah, Robin was great. She was our photographer and one of our excellent writers. But Robin, her boyfriend, now her husband, I believe was so fun. Yeah, Robin was great. She was our photographer and one of our excellent writers. But Robin, her boyfriend, now her 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. I need this. So it has half-pop curls, it has like little chunks of like the, so 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 haven't had it since my serious eats days

because I haven't been able to get, maybe I should call up Robin and ask her to ship me some, but yeah. I need this. For me, not you, me. Get her to send me some. Sure, barely know her, but that's okay. That sounds amazing.

Have you ever made caramel popcorn? Cause that was definitely, I did, I have a- Dad, two things. Zatar on popcorn, excellent. Okay. And then the other one, fried sage leaves. And you put like the stems in the pot with the popcorn when you're popping the popcorn.

But yeah, fried sage leaves crumbled up and tossed in the popcorn. Or even this like left hole, but in that aroma in there, I really like. Okay, I can see that. Can I still butter it? Like to, can I still butter it all to hell? Butter whatever you want, Deb.

Sage and butter would be really good. Yeah, I'm gonna stop you from buttering whatever you feel like. I've also done a Chex mix where I use the popcorn instead of the Chex. So it's basically those flavors, like the butter, the spices, the Worcestershire, all the stuff that you would put in a Chex mix, plus the pretzels.

But I use it with popcorn because popcorn's my favorite thing. I'm glad we can at least agree that popcorn is our favorite thing. That's where this episode started. That we don't agree on how to make it or how to flavor it or even what the best popcorn is. I totally agree. If you're making me popcorn in a wok, I'm thrilled. Or if you have a Whirly Pop, I just don't know that I am going to get a Whirly Pop in

my small kitchen. Got it. We'll probably cave eventually. How about we say, I will never turn down popcorn from you, and you will never turn down popcorn from me? Never turn down popcorn. Sound good?

I will never, I just said I'd 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 classic. Oh yes, I've seen that recipe. I know they're all over the internet, but I swear I people do this. I have a recipe for salted brown butter rice crispy treats. Like very classic.

I've seen that recipe. I know they're all over the internet, but I swear I did it first. Not to be that person. I'm pretty sure, no, I believe you, Deb. Did it a very long time ago. Anyway, because I'm an old person on the internet. I have seen 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'd get the popcorn. I'm going to do this tonight. I'll do it with my kids. You just have a bag of marshmallows around?

We have a bag of marshmallows and we have some fancy popcorn. Last year for Christmas, my daughter bought me one of those sets that have 24 different types of popcorn in them of all different colors. So we have some fancy popcorn and we're going to do it. Kenji, 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'd need other stuff in there, right? I don't think you put some, just a few kernels in. You'd need other stuff in there, right? I don't think you could just take plain popcorn and stick it in a soup foot. Less popcorn, 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 Deterly, who just opened up a new restaurant in Brooklyn. He was the winner of Top Chefs at season one. In one episode, they had to cook out of a convenience store, and he won by making a little popcorn cake. Making popcorn, yeah. We should turn to Harold to ask, how do you reuse leftover popcorn?

Does a taco, Deb, do you think popcorn tacos? 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 cool crunchy seasoning topping on maybe a corn taco. You could have fun with the flavors for sure. One thing that I, you know, popcorn or roasted, like large kernel corn is a very common accompaniment to ceviche, right, in 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 and topping it with popcorn. And I bet it tastes good. I bet it's the type of restaurant that I wouldn't want to go to, but I bet it does taste good. I have no idea that popcorn is often served with ceviche. I'm just Googling it now and I've totally missed that. And it's such a great idea. 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 fatty. Kenji, 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 put the popcorn in and you just saute it like you were trying to crisp up some chunks of chorizo or something? Could you re-crisp popcorn and get it to a 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. Does popcorn leftover Kenji? Does popcorn leftover?

I've 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. It's because I made a bunch last night after the kids were asleep because I wanted to like test a couple of things before we recorded this episode. So there is 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 as any butter does., does it come easily out of kids clothes? As well as any butter does. Butter does not come easily out of kids clothes. Butter, once it soaks into fabrics, I find it real hard to get it.

Like that's a stain that just pops up again and again, even after it comes out of the wash. Do you ever use dish soap? I haven't. Like mom tips for laundry. I've been helps a little bit, not always. All right, that's good 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 physically causing myself harm. When I was 11 years old, my uncle took me to see Robocop 2, which was definitely not a movie I was allowed to see. And while we were in there, he also bought me 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 back up into the into the bucket um and for and for some reason the butter smell got intensified it smelled like it smelled like the movie theater lobby once again because like I brought all this butter into 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. Oh, okay. Thanks. You're really like,

Kent is like, my goal today is to ruin popcorn for Deb and everyone listening. That's it for today's episode. Is there another recipe or food you want us to chat about? Tell us at therecipepodcast.com or on socials at Kenji and Deb. Or you can call us and leave us a message at 202-709-7607. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and Jay Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions.

Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich, and Yori Lissardo is the director of network operations. Apu Gotay, Emmanuel Johnson, and Mike Russo handle our social media. We'll see you next time on The Recipe with Devin Kenji.