Popcorn Potpourri

by Lawrence David Kusche

Every popcorn lover will treasure the 200 delicious and easy recipes in this book. You’ll be delighted and amazed at what you can do with popcorn. Snacks, appetizers, main dishes, desserts, decorations, sculptures, even breakfasts! The complete book for popcorn fans!

Genres: Cookbooks

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Jerry]

This is a very unusual book.

I’ve actually known of this cookbook’s existence for a while now, but never saw it cheap enough to risk picking it up. While I love popcorn, an entire cookbook based on it seemed overkill, and a browse through the book indicated that a lot of the “200 new ways to enjoy popcorn” are practically the same recipe.

Once you’ve got the idea that you can make caramel corn with, say, Orange Crush, making it with root beer follows pretty logically. The same with special spices. A lot of the recipes are minor variations on a theme.

That said, this is a very fun book. Some of the recipes are ones I can’t believe I never thought of, and some are ones I’m intrigued to find out if they’re going to work.

The first recipe was a simple one: Popcorn with Bouillon Butter. The tagline of the recipe is “Bouillon on popcorn?” Which is a silly tagline because it’s one of those, why did I never think of this before? ideas. I have beef bouillon powder in my cupboard because almost all recipes call for chicken bouillon, and if I keep canned beef bouillon it’s always going past its expiration date.

Even beef bouillon powder goes past its expiration date, which means I need more uses for it. Putting it on popcorn is amazing.

The Coconut Munch was not amazing, but was quite good. It’s caramel corn with shredded coconut and flavored with “1 (12-oz) bottle orange soda”. Unfortunately, the orange soda overpowered the coconut.

Most syrups make the crunchiest popcorn balls when cooked to a temperature of 250° F (121° C) on a candy thermometer. Cooked to any temperature above that, the cooled syrup will become very hard.

That may be, and probably is, true of popcorn balls, but most of the loose caramel corn recipes in these pages use the same temperature. But 250° is sugar’s firm ball stage. It means caramel corn is still sticky and soft—like a popcorn ball. In the other recipe I use for caramel corn, I bring the sugar up to 280° for the soft crack stage.

This is an easily fixable problem, but weird that it needs to be fixed. It’s not universal, either. The Maple-Coated Corn brings the syrup to 275°, which is in the soft crack range. The Molasses Candy on the next page goes to 300°, well into hard crack.

One of the interesting ideas for popcorn is to grind it coarse or fine for use in other recipes. There are recipes for fried chicken, coated with ground popcorn, and bread made with ground popcorn, and even a meat loaf-like loaf made with ground popcorn.

Because popcorn and milk are naturally sweet, you’ll need little, if any, sugar or honey.

I tried the more conventional Granola, made with oatmeal, wheat germ, and coarse-ground popcorn as the main grains. It’s a great breakfast cereal, and the popcorn adds a unique flavor to it.

The book also contains interludes of popcorn science, popcorn history, and popcorn techniques. What’s the best temperature to pop corn at? About 480°. What’s the best way to pop corn? Almost certainly the stove-top popper with stirrer, such as the Whirley-Pop. What is it that gives theater popcorn its unique flavor?

Instead of regular butter, pros use anhydrous butter—butter from which the curds and whey have been removed… Anhydrous butter melts at room temperature. It melts in your mouth. Your body temperature makes it melt even after the popcorn has cooled and the butter has solidified.

This is a great book for popcorn fans, even if some of the recipes are repetitive.