Popcorn

Serious Eats

Dec 25, 2024

Skip the Store-Bought Stuff and Make Your Own Gourmet Popcorn at Home

Make popcorn in the microwave in a brown paper bag—not the store-bought microwaveable stuff that comes pre-coated in flavors, but your own. A bag of microwave popcorn is incredibly easy to make at home and lets you customize your popcorn with your own flavors.

Serious Eats

Nov 24, 2024

Brown Butter Maple Pecan Popcorn

In this recipe, rich brown butter and maple syrup are cooked into a quick caramel, which is then used to both candy the pecans and coat freshly popped popcorn. A generous pinch of salt makes all those sweet-savory flavors pop.

NYT Cooking

Oct 17, 2023

Popcorn Balls

A joy to both make and eat, popcorn balls are a chewy and sweet treat prepared with a mix of mini marshmallows, powdered sugar and corn syrup. Dress them up for special occasions with a variety of mix-ins, such as candies, colorful sprinkles, crushed pretzels, crumbled cookies and food coloring. To ensure the popcorn balls stay intact, the popcorn is kept warm in the oven until it’s ready to be mixed with the hot marshmallow cream. You’ll need to shape the popcorn balls fairly quickly, so this becomes a fun activity for the kids to lend a hand.

Serious Eats

Mar 3, 2023

How To Make Cornmeal Using Popcorn

Grinding my own cornmeal was something I hadn't even begun to consider when I first stumbled upon discussions of how great the freshly milled variety made your cornbread, but it's as simple as using a high speed blender. You can even use the popcorn already in your pantry.

NYT Cooking

Jun 27, 2018

Vegan ‘Cheesy’ Popcorn

Using more oil than popcorn kernels — a technique developed by Jessica Koslow, the chef and owner of Sqirl in Los Angeles — gives you an ultracrunchy popcorn with rich flavor. Ms. Koslow prefers grapeseed oil for its high smoke point and clean taste. But to mix things up, you can combine grapeseed oil with a more flavorful oil such as virgin coconut, olive oil, butter, duck fat, or bacon grease. Use 1/4 cup of each. After popping, you can toss the kernels with just salt (they won't need any more fat by way of butter) or a flavorful spice mix. Here, they're tossed with nutritional yeast, which gives them a Parmesan-like umami flavor, along with a little rosemary or kelp powder for depth. 

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Homemade Cracker Jack

A salty-sweet, caramel-coated popcorn often eaten at baseball games, Cracker Jack is one of the many well-known confections from Chicago. While molasses-covered popcorn was already popular in the Northeast, the creation of Cracker Jack’s special formula is credited to German brothers Frederick William and Louis Rueckheim. Besides coming up with the signature combination of popcorn, molasses and peanuts, they even devised a special package to keep it fresh and crisp. By the late 1800s, the snack was so loved that their company was producing four-and-a-half tons a day. This homemade version is best enjoyed the day it’s made, though it will keep for up to three days in an airtight container. Use large, red-skinned peanuts in this recipe if you can find them, as the skins lend a pleasant bitterness that works well with the molasses-caramel coating.

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Maple Pecan Caramel Corn

Made from a combination of maple syrup and brown sugar, the rich, buttery caramel on this popcorn has a brittle, candy-like crunch that’s heightened by plenty of toasted pecans added alongside. (Cracker Jack fans can substitute roasted, salted peanuts.) A small amount of baking soda keeps the caramel from becoming sticky, but note that you’ll need an instant-read thermometer to yield the best result. If you’d rather use an air popper to prepare your popcorn, you can — just skip Step 2. The caramel corn will keep in an airtight container for at least a week.

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Cinnamon Toast Popcorn

This snackable pile of lightly sweetened popcorn is reminiscent of buttery cinnamon toast and the perfect treat for two or four (or one!). You can easily make another batch to serve a crowd. Popcorn is coated in syrup and toasted in a pot to create a shell of caramelized sugar that’s dusted with cinnamon. Five minutes out of the pot, the popcorn cools to a soft crispness, but if you bake it for just 10 minutes, the popped kernels dry all the way through and become crunchy to their core. This treat is delicious on its own or as part of a dessert board with gingerbread biscotti, iced oatmeal cookies or any other cookies of your choice.

NYT Cooking

Sweet-and-Salty Party Mix

This joyful, crunchy snack to share with friends (and enjoy with cocktails) relies on corn syrup, sugar and soy sauce for a balance of sweet and savory. The glaze in this recipe is a riff on the sweet-and-salty coating used in cereal-seaweed snack mixes found in Hawaii that bakes into an irresistible, super-crisp shell. A bit of Worcestershire sauce lend some tang, and cayenne adds a surprising touch of heat. Use the mix-in amounts as a guide, and feel free to use whatever cereals, crackers and nuts speak to you.

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Popcorn Masa for Empanadas

Grinding boiled popcorn kernels in a wet mill or food processor produces a masa with much better flavor and texture than you can get with precooked cornmeal (masarepa). I use a Victoria-brand cast-iron mill, produced in Colombia, which costs about $50 online. This popcorn masa, a technique taught to me by the chef Carlos Gaviria, a scholar of regional Colombian cooking at the University of La Sabana, forms the crust for these Colombian Beef and Potato Empanadas.

NYT Cooking

Spicy Pimentón Popcorn

Using more oil than popcorn, a technique developed by Jessica Koslow of Sqirl in Los Angeles, yields a particularly crisp and rich popcorn. Here, the kernels are popped, then tossed while still hot with a combination of sweet and hot smoked paprikas, and bit of earthy cumin. It's a complex mix that can be as hot as you can take it.

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Popcorn Crunch

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Lantern Cracker Jack

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Popcorn Pudding

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Sweet And Salty Popcorn With Orange-Blossom Honey

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Cane Syrup Popcorn Balls

Cane syrup, a caramelized, concentrated version of pure cane juice, is one of the basic flavors of southern Louisiana, where about half the sugar cane in the United States is grown. Here, use it to give popcorn balls a deep, buttery caramel taste, perfect for a Halloween treat. Make sure to butter your hands well before shaping the mixture into balls. And if you live outside a region where you can get cane syrup, try Lyle’s Golden Syrup, a British sweetener often found in supermarket baking aisles.

NYT Cooking

Popcorn Soup

NYT Cooking

Not-Too-Sweet Wok-Popped Coconut Kettle Corn

I’m usually not a big fan of sweet kettle corn, but I wanted to make a moderately sweet version because some people love it and it is nice to be able to offer a sweet snack for the holidays. I realized after testing this recipe that I do like kettle corn if it isn’t too sweet. The trick to not burning the sugar when you make kettle corn is to add the sugar off the heat at the end of popping. The wok will be hot enough to caramelize it.

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Ecuadorean Shrimp Ceviche

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Spiced Wok-Popped Popcorn

My mother always used the wok for making popcorn. It is the perfect pan for it. An added bonus is that making popcorn adds more patina to your wok, and a well-seasoned wok is the healthiest type of nonstick cookware there is. I have played around with all sorts of seasonings for popcorn; my favorite is the Tunisian mix called tabil, minus the dried garlic. See the recipe below for the mix, which I make up by the jar and keep in my freezer. To help with cleanup, line the lid of your wok with aluminum foil.