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.
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.
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.
Try it! I’m sure not going back to canola oil.
Coconut oil
Olive oil here. The market nearby doesn’t sell canola oil because it was never popular. MSG is also great on popcorn.
Nutritional yeast is also amazing. Gives it a cheesy flavor, and it’s healthy to boot!
Nutritional yeast, chicken salt, and ghee for the oil is my go to. Absolutely delicious.
Olive oil has a very distinct olive flavour and is generally not advised to heat up to much, since it gets carcinogenic
That’s great and all, but if any discussion about popcorn on the stove doesn’t involve Flavicol, it’s simply incomplete.
smacks forehead
That is a great idea! Coconut oil was ok,but kinda odd-flavored for popcorn …
Sorry for the hijack, but the post I see above this comment is some baseball scores. Twins @ Braves. Using Lemmy.world in a web browser. What’s going on?
This is the URL: https://lemmy.world/post/661229?scrollToComments=true
It’s a bot. I kept getting it too and there are identical ones for other teams.
Here’s how I blocked it. Click on the community listed next to the (bot) username. Then on that page block the community. It should be on the upper part on the right close to where it says join the community.
I had like three bot baseball communities that I blocked.
It’s another websocket related bug that’s already been fixed! lemmy.world is currently out of date, however. If you want to get rid of it, either wait for Ruud to push the update, or switch instances.
Since ghee is so expensive, I usually do coconut oil and ghee mixed!
I love ghee on my stovetop popcorn! A wok works great!
Dude, my mom makes ghee out of milk. It costs literally nothing
That’s not true because you still have to buy the milk.
Not if you’re a mom 😉
Tiddy butter popcorn is a sentence crafted by war criminals to torture the goodness from the world.
to make ghee at home costs lots of milk, time, and effort. Try making ghee yourself from cratch and you’ll know exactly how much it really costs.
Go to youtube and watch how to make ghee. It’s quite simple. I use butter to make mine. I won’t buy expensive storebought again because it’s so cheap and simple to make.
Never tried Ghee. I usually use canola, coconut, or bacon grease. I’m up for more buttery flavor though. Thanks!
Bacon grease sounds incredible. How much of the flavor ends up in the popcorn?
Sounds a bit like that bacon popcorn…
It’s subtle, but I only use just enough to pop the kernels. I also have a jar of it by the stove most of the time.
…holy shit you’re a genius.
**gheenius
Ugh. That was so bad. I love that 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.
“Ghee!”
“No, Ghee-T-E.”
(that’s not how it’s pronounced.)
(Silence!)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.
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.
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.
Don’t some companies sell “popcorn oil”? What is that made of?
Oil and artificial flavors. I’ve tried a lot of them and none of them have a “real” butter flavor. It’s more of a greasy feel than taste.
soybean oil, usually. and diacetyl can be added as a buttery flavoring.
fun fact: diacetyl inhaled in large enough doses can cause bronchitis. this was a problem in popcorn facilities, hence the term “popcorn lung”
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.
wait how can it be indian butter I thought they don’t exploit cows there
They just leave them to suffer of malnutrition and disease in the streets. Good thing they don’t exploit them!
No, most Indians aren’t vegan, just vegetarian. They just don’t kill cows (and this isn’t universal, some areas don’t care).
But I thought Indians were a monolith
I use bacon grease.
