I eat popcorn fairly often and I was wondering if I can improve on the taste with minimal effort. Do you guys know any good mix I could use instead of salt alone?
Some dashes of hot sauce can be nice. Doesn’t usually make it too soggy as long as you’re not to wild in the streets with it.
Popcorn is super flexible, if there’s a flavor you like there’s a good chance you’ll like it on popcorn… just have to watch out for texture. You want to add a little moisture but not make it wet, beyond that… you are the artist and the popcorn is your palette 🎨
Our favourite here is garlic-infused olive oil with nutritional yeast.
It’s addictive as hell. Once you get into nutritional yeast, you want to put it on everything.
I’ve never heard of that, I’ll definitely look into trying it. Thanks!
My two favorites are chili powder + sugar and curry powder.
Tajin or ranch powder work pretty well too
Ranch powder is a clever idea. Probably much cheaper than the popcorn flavoring mixes they sell. ETA: And Taijin sounds a lot simpler than squeezing out solids from spicy oil.
I got a pack of popcorn flavorings a while back and upon looking at the ingredients list, realized that I was just buying greatly-marked-up versions of things that I could get for far less in bulk, like powdered butter, powdered cheese, etc.
Trader Joe’s “Everything But the Elote” seasoning salt is pretty good. https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/everything-but-the-elote-seasoning-blend-066804
I haven’t seen that vid in ages, didn’t expect it here.
Somehow i had never seen this video before. Honestly? beats Food Network. Now im off to Amazon to buy a Wok and a Coffee grinder. I need to get bomb at making Pepcorn.
Pepcorn is actually and unironically very good.
I could eat seven bowls of that!
Was hoping to see someone post this lol. Love it.
Chilli crisp goes hard on popcorn! Lao gan ma is a good brand, though homemade is far superior - I like to caramelise my onions before crisping them up, and I also like to use a variety of chillis (including some relatively hot ones)!
Consider olive oil instead of butter just in general. We just do olive oil and salt but love some of the other ideas here.
- Garlic Salt, onion power, and parsley flakes.
- Cajun seasoning
- Cinnamon roll blend - https://thegingeredwhisk.com/cinnamon-roll-spice-mix/
This might be the only food that is sweeter outside of the US, well, besides kettle corn.
When I eat it enough to get tired of butter and salt, I spritz on evoo or tamari/soy sauce. For spice blends, I really like the ones from Penzey’s, especially Sunny Spain, or something else that amounts to lemon pepper.
If you’re willing to add some calories, oil. I got an oil sprayer. I fill it half with chili oil, half with olive oil; not too hot, but gives it a kick. Sprayed on, it doesn’t put nearly as much in as being drizzled on. It helps make powdery stuff adhere to the popcorn, too.
I have a salt shaker of Flavacol, which is the “salt” part of what goes into movie theater popcorn.
Movie theaters use (or used, dunno if this has changed) palm oil. This can congeal at room temperature, so may need to be heated.
Powdered butter or powdered various sorts of cheese can be kept in the fridge and can just be sprinkled on.
Cinnamon and sugar can be sprinkled on.
Actually, for popping they mostly use coconut oil. And some places use stuff that gives the popcorn a weird coconut flavor. The stuff that they put on at the end might be /probably is palm oil based though.
Argh, yes, you are right, thanks. Brain fart on my part. It’s coconut oil that does the room temperature congealing thing.
Il second oil as a topping but when I’m feeling extra fancy,y favorite is white truffle oil!
I always like to mix in some butter and sriracha
To get the movie theatre experience you can use oil and butter-salt (the yellow powder they use). Try peanut oil for cooking in a pot, then butter-salt, and top with drizzle of real melted butter. Obviously not a healthy choice but it’s great.
The movie theaters use a product called flavacol. You can buy it online if you want “authentic” movie theater popcorn.
Flavor is the secret ingredient. Sprinkle a bit over the kernels immediately after dropping them in the oil and it’ll get incorporated with the popcorn as it pops.
My goto is butter plus Aromat (a flavored msg based seasoning)
go on amazon and buy 1kg of flavacol and eat cinema popcorn every night
This is the way to go. Just recently got some and it’s perfect. Don’t follow the box amounts though because it’ll be too salty (imo), use about a tsp per cup of kernals
