OK, listen up kids! I’m going to teach you how to make amazing popcorn at home, without any special hardware other than a 12” cast iron skillet. (Which you already have, right? RIGHT?!?)
You’ll need a lid for your skillet. Having a clear lid for your skillet makes many dishes easier to cook, so here are some options:
- Lodge sells a lid made just for your skillet. You can buy it from my Manly Gear store by clicking the link up top.
- You can buy a universal lid from most department stores.
- You can measure your skillet and find a lid from something else that fits.
It turns out the lid from one of my Wife’s old non-stick cook pots fits the Lodge perfectly so we kept it when we tossed out the non-stick silliness.
In a pinch, you can improvise a lid with common household items like tin foil.
In addition to a pot with good thermal properties and a lid, you’ll need popcorn, popcorn salt, a high heat cooking oil and butter.
Popcorn is pretty self explanatory I think. The fresher it is, the better it will taste and the more reliably it will pop. Ideally it should be stored in an airtight container like a glass jar.
Popcorn salt differs from normal salt in that it is very fine, almost like flour. This fine texture allows it to stick to the popcorn better and be distributed more evenly. You can buy it at a store, or better yet, make it yourself. A little Manly Ingenuity will provide many possible ways to grind salt into a super fine powder. At home I use a mortar and pestle to grind sea salt or kosher salt (AKA “Real Salt”). You could also use a small blender like a Magic Bullet.
You’ll need a small amount of high heat cooking oil to put into the pan. The cooking oil acts as a heat conductor, allowing heat to be conducted to the popcorn kernels better. This oil will contribute some taste to the popcorn too. Coconut oil is the ideal oil for this, with grapeseed and peanut oil being good second choices. You can use canola oil if that’s all you have, but once you’ve used up your bottle of canola, please buy something else.
Real popcorn also requires real butter. Anything which claims to taste like butter, replace butter or otherwise imitate butter is probably poisonous, or at the very least blasphemous.
While spending the weekend at our cabin, my pregnant wife and I were experiencing some popcorn cravings so I made some in the cast iron skillet.
I’ll walk you through what I did so you can see how easy it is to make amazing popcorn pretty much anywhere.
We didn’t have a mortar and pestle or a blender so I put some salt in the bottom of the skillet and ground it up using the back of a spoon. I then dumped my homemade popcorn salt into a bowl for later. I considered grinding the salt between two rocks just to prove it could be done, but I was too hungry to be playing with rocks.
I put the skillet on the stove on medium heat, added a tablespoon of cooking oil and three popcorn kernels. These kernels are my thermometer, and when they all pop it’s a sign to add the rest of the popcorn. (I use about 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels per 2 people, your consumption may be different.)
It takes a few minutes for the skillet to get up to temperature so you can use this time to melt some butter. I used a couple of tablespoons because butter is awesome.
Improvised popcorn popper. Manly Ingenuity!
When my three kernels popped I put the rest of the kernels into the skillet and covered it. I had no lid so I used a baking sheet. I picked the skillet up and gave it a shake, then put it back on heat. I repeated this process every 5-10 seconds. Shaking the skillet agitates the popcorn kernels so they don’t burn and makes sure that the un-popped kernels all make it to the bottom so they can pop.
After 2-3 minutes all of the kernels had popped. It is smart to wait about 15 second after the last explosion before you take the cover off. I didn’t do this and a kernel popped right after I took the cover off, showering me with popcorn. It was funny, but not necessary.
I put the popcorn into a bowl, then drizzled some melted butter and sprinkled some salt over it. I stirred the popcorn, and repeated the butter and salt treatment until I had decreed that it was sufficiently buttered and salted.
It was amazing of course, and took less than 10 minutes start to finish.
As you can see, there is no need to buy a popcorn popper. If you already own one, you can give it to a homeless person because you don’t need to waste cupboard space on a silly piece of hardware that doesn’t do the job any better than your trusty 12” cast iron skillet.
A good bowl of popcorn calls for a good movie to watch it with. If you want to impress someone with your refined taste in movies, I have a few suggestions that are sure to please any crowd:
