YSK: If you make popcorn in a pot on the stove, the oil to use is ghee.
Why YSK: 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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
Oh, that’s brilliant! We got a whirly-pop last Christmas and have just been using generic vegetable oil but it definitely doesn’t improve the taste any. Looking forward to trying this.
And if youre a terrible cook (like me), throwing the kernals in a paper lunch bag & throwing it in the microwave for 3 minutes makes perfect popcorn (and does so without covering your kitchen in oil splatter/ annoying your neighbors with smoke detectors going off.)
Lol sorry. Thanks for the ghee suggestion! It sounds awesome & im excited to try it!
I'll give this a try. At my theater we use peanut oil because we are a small single screener and don't need to pinch every penny and use flavicol or something else less natural. It tastes good to me though I am peanut intolerant (not a major allergy but it upsets my digestive system, which upsets those around me).
At home, corn oil is my go-to as I am just cooking corn in corn and then melt some butter and salt the butter and toss the popcorn with it to get it evenly coated.
One other trick we do at the theater and you might be able get your place to do is when they add 'butter flavoring' is to ask them to half full the bag, pump some on, shake up the bag, add the rest of the popcorn and add more flavoring. It makes the bottom levels of popcorn more consistent with flavor.
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.