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.
Try it! I’m sure not going back to canola oil.
Nutritional yeast is also amazing. Gives it a cheesy flavor, and it’s healthy to boot!
I second that comment.
It’s been about two decades since I’ve gone there, but the Landmark Cinemas in the San Diego area had nutritional yeast for your popcorn, right there in the station where you pump your own butter and grab napkins. Curious, I gave it a try…
For the past twenty years (give or take), a can of Bragg’s Nutritional Yeast has been an ever-present staple in the kitchen, which I use to season popcorn, as well as slightly charred tortillas with either butter or avocado.