Ghee, or Indian-style clarified butter, is butter that’s been simmered and the milk solids (proteins and sugars) skimmed off. This leaves a clear yellow oil that doesn’t smoke when it’s heated and doesn’t go rancid quickly, but has a distinct toasty butter flavor.
Popcorn fans often want a buttery flavor, but plain butter is a bad choice for popping popcorn in a pot, because the proteins and sugars smoke and burn around the same temperature where it’s hot enough to pop the kernels.
Vegetable oil is either flavorless or faintly bitter, and some high-temperature vegetable oils tend to start polymerizing (i.e. becoming plastic) when heated in small amounts. This is also not good for popcorn.
Good-quality popcorn popped in ghee reliably produces lots of “butterfly” popcorn with few unpopped “duds” and no scorched kernels or batches ruined by smoke.
Try it! I’m sure not going back to canola oil.
Never tried Ghee. I usually use canola, coconut, or bacon grease. I’m up for more buttery flavor though. Thanks!
Bacon grease sounds incredible. How much of the flavor ends up in the popcorn?
It’s subtle, but I only use just enough to pop the kernels. I also have a jar of it by the stove most of the time.
Sounds a bit like that bacon popcorn…
Avocado oil is great for popcorn. It doesn’t add any flavor but I love the resulting texture: very crisp and clean. I like using red or blue corn because the contrast is visually appealing. You want long, skinny kernels to get the butterfly popcorn. Personally I’m crazy for cheesy popcorn, and the secret there is to find cheese powder with some savory herbs like oregano. I also love to do it with Kashmiri (floral hot Indian chili) powder.
Important edit: Do NOT under any circumstance use chili popcorn to spice up Netflix & Chill. This is a snack for lonely degenerates who don’t even masturbate daily any more. It’s for watching war documentaries and French New Wave, not pervy cartoons and superhero throwdowns with a plot designed to be ignored while you finger your frenemies. You won’t look worldly and sophisticated while you’re driving somebody to the fucking hospital. Be responsible.
You can also get brewers yeast
After reading this post a few days back, I was inspired to get some Ghee and try it out. Absolutely delicious, thank you @fubo@lemmy.world!
smacks forehead
That is a great idea! Coconut oil was ok,but kinda odd-flavored for popcorn …
Since ghee is so expensive, I usually do coconut oil and ghee mixed!
I love ghee on my stovetop popcorn! A wok works great!
Go to youtube and watch how to make ghee. It’s quite simple. I use butter to make mine. I won’t buy expensive storebought again because it’s so cheap and simple to make.
Dude, my mom makes ghee out of milk. It costs literally nothing
to make ghee at home costs lots of milk, time, and effort. Try making ghee yourself from cratch and you’ll know exactly how much it really costs.
That’s not true because you still have to buy the milk.
Not if you’re a mom 😉
Tiddy butter popcorn is a sentence crafted by war criminals to torture the goodness from the world.
I’ve always just used avocado oil. Sometimes coconut oil but that obviously leaves a faint hint of coconut that not everyone likes. I’ll try ghee next time but I never heard of anyone trying to make pop corn with just butter in the pan. That sounds like a mistake folks only make once! lol
The makers of my commercial-grade popper recommend coconut oil. Like you, I am interested in trying ghee. It’s good to just have a bottle of that stuff handy for lots of things.
I think ghee is clarified butter.
They are pretty much the same thing. Clarified butter can be skimmed as soon as the milk solids begin to separate. Ghee is cooked until the solids become browned and settle to the bottom, giving it more of a nutty flavor.
…holy shit you’re a genius.
**gheenius
Ugh. That was so bad. I love that for you.
Don’t some companies sell “popcorn oil”? What is that made of?
Oil and artificial flavors. I’ve tried a lot of them and none of them have a “real” butter flavor. It’s more of a greasy feel than taste.
soybean oil, usually. and diacetyl can be added as a buttery flavoring.
fun fact: diacetyl inhaled in large enough doses can cause bronchitis. this was a problem in popcorn topping factories, hence the term “popcorn lung”
Coconut oil
We use non-virgin olive oil. High smoke point, but good flavor.
Ghee sounds awesome for popcorn! I use refined coconut oil and Flavacol at the moment.
Coconut oil for popcorn?! How does that affect the taste?
You must use refined coconut oil. As long as it is refined, there is no coconut flavor. It basically just tastes like theatre popcorn, because that’s what they use. They just use a fancier version that has beta-carotene in it, for a nice yellow coloring.
I prefer to airpop it in the microwave and then spritz EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) on afterwards. EVOO is delicious, and unrefined oils like EVOO retain more flavor if you don’t heat them.
For any dairy intolerant or vegan people here you can get a similar effect by clarifying a vegetable spread like Flora and adding salt until it tastes ‘buttery’ enough for you
Peanut Oil is the answer. High smoke point, taste negligible.
- Not buttery
- Although it probably doesn’t kill the housemate with the peanut allergy, it makes them very uncomfortable and possibly costs them a significant medical bill.
I add butter back into the pot after popping to melt (add flavours), then pour on popcorn.
Olive oil here. The market nearby doesn’t sell canola oil because it was never popular. MSG is also great on popcorn.
Nutritional yeast is also amazing. Gives it a cheesy flavor, and it’s healthy to boot!
Olive oil has a very distinct olive flavour and is generally not advised to heat up to much, since it gets carcinogenic
Is this a protip to make popcorn more enjoyable when Reddit goes to shit on the 1st of July? 😅So store bought ready to pop microwaveable “buttered” popcorn is not with ghee, right?
No, it’s not made with ghee. Microwave popcorn “butter” is typically artificially flavored oil.
