YSK: If you make popcorn in a pot on the stove, the oil to use is ghee.

fubo@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 60 points –

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.

83

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 a 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.

Burlap and barrel has a black lime and a black urfa chili that are just fantastic on popcorn.

Never tried Ghee. I usually use canola, coconut, or bacon grease. I'm up for more buttery flavor though. Thanks!

smacks forehead

That is a great idea! Coconut oil was ok,but kinda odd-flavored for popcorn ...

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

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.

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.

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

The makers of my commercial-grade popper recommend coconut oil. Like you, I am interested in trying ghee. It's good to just have a bottle of that stuff handy for lots of things.

I think ghee is clarified butter.

They are pretty much the same thing. Clarified butter can be skimmed as soon as the milk solids begin to separate. Ghee is cooked until the solids become browned and settle to the bottom, giving it more of a nutty flavor.

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 topping factories, hence the term "popcorn lung"

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

Exactly. And don't use the vegan butter to pop the corn, just use some neutral vegetable oil like rapeseed oil there. After the corns have popped, just melt the vegan butter in a pan and drip it over your popcorn.

We use non-virgin olive oil. High smoke point, but good 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.

"Ghee!"
"No, Ghee-T-E."
(that's not how it's pronounced.)
(Silence!)

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.

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.

Olive oil has a very distinct olive flavour and is generally not advised to heat up to much, since it gets carcinogenic

Add in a teaspoon of Tabasco to the butter/ghee/oil before popping. 🍿

Oh my Lord, you're either a wizard or I just can't cook for shit. I just toss a few shakes of the Tabasco into the popcorn after it's finished and shake it around like an idiot. Your method makes much more sense.

Also, as far as i know, you can buy the same seasoning they put on the popcorn at the theaters. Its called flavacol.

Also, beware of bagged popcorn a lot of the bags contain PFAS, which is supposedly bad for you.

yall are burning your butter?

Well how else are we gonna make our burnt butter biscuits?? Lol

Ghee sounds awesome for popcorn! I use refined coconut oil and Flavacol at the moment.

Coconut oil for popcorn?! How does that affect the taste?

You must use refined coconut oil. As long as it is refined, there is no coconut flavor. It basically just tastes like theatre popcorn, because that's what they use. They just use a fancier version that has beta-carotene in it, for a nice yellow coloring.

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.

I tried ghee, it tasted awful. Butter flavored coconut oil is where it's at.

Peanut Oil is the answer. High smoke point, taste negligible.

  1. Not buttery
  2. Although it probably doesn't kill the housemate with the peanut allergy, it makes them very uncomfortable and possibly costs them a significant medical bill.

Is this a protip to make popcorn more enjoyable when Reddit goes to shit on the 1st of July? 😅

So store bought ready to pop microwaveable "buttered" popcorn is not with ghee, right?

No, it's not made with ghee. Microwave popcorn "butter" is typically artificially flavored oil.

@fubo
I agree. Ghee is very nice for popcorn. And for everyone who isn't into milk products, vegetable ghee has the same qualities and flavor profile.

what is vegetable ghee?

@xuxebiko https://roshnisanghvi.com/blogs/nutrition-tips/top-3-vegan-butter-or-ghee-alternatives
Next time use a search engine of your choice

@fubo

None of them are ghee. They're all interesterified vegetable fat/ oils with ghee flavour added calling themselves "vegan ghee" to con the gulllible.

There's no harm in being vegan, but it is foolish to fall for unhealthy products because they brand themelves as vegan/ vegetable-based.
Stick to vegetable oils but ffs don't call them ghee.

Interesterified oils increase heart-disease risk by lowering HDL (good) cholesterol and raising LDL (bad) cholesterol, (like trans fats do). And they increase the risk of type 2 diabetes by raising fasting blood-glucose levels and decreasing insulin response. They also increase liver cellular stress markers.

Look up the effects of interesterified vegetable fat/ oils on a search engine of your choice and then read their labels before recommending them.

@xuxebiko
I'm no expert in these matters. But I can't imagine ghee (clarified butter) being very healthy either in large quantities. If you are vegan (which I'm not) this a way to taste the op's popcorn suggestion. I get the feeling you already had an opinion on the whole ghee/fake vegan ghee thing. And al I can say is, in the Indian cuisine, with a relatively large vegan population, fake ghee is a thing. Not some hipster hype.
This was about taste and cooking. Not about health.
@fubo

India does not have a 'large vegan populatiion', it has a large 'vegetarian' population with milk, yoghurt (we call it curd/ dahi), paneer (cottage cheese), and ghee a part of the daily diet. Vegetable fat/ oils used in cooking instead of ghee are usually either raw or filtered or refined. Interestified vegetable oil/ fat is a relatively new product and is used by FMCG co.s as a replacement for palm oil in their products. Interestified vegetable oil also tastes nothing like ghee. Don't take my word for it, try it out yourself.

Any Indian touting vegan ghee will get laughed out of their home and get told to use the real thing.

wait how can it be indian butter I thought they don't exploit cows there

No, most Indians aren't vegan, just vegetarian. They just don't kill cows (and this isn't universal, some areas don't care).

YSK: Cows are raped & slaughtered for butter

explain

In order for a cow to produce milk it must be pregnant or recently pregnant, then once it gets older and starts producing less milk it will be slaughtered.

~~the more you know!~~

is - in your opinion - artificial insemination equal to rape?

no.

then something here doesnt make sense

Maybe it’s the lack of consent?

maybe. maybe the topic is more complex than that.

Are cows raped for butter? always? is it the same degree of awfulness if a cow gets 'raped' in a industrial plant or if a cow gets mounted by a bull in a field? is 'rape' even a term that can be used to describe actions that are done to or by animals? Or should it be used for humans only? is it disrespectful to human victims of rape to use the same words to describe something that happened to an animal? Are cows slaughtered for butter? every cow that produced milk that was used to make butter? How many people could the death of a cow benefit before it becomes a morally correct thing to do? What is a cows life worth? Would stopping to breed cows and thus a collapsing overall world-population of cows be something good or something bad? Or is it in between somewhere? Who defines even what is morally correct and what isnt?

Im not trying to be an asshole or anything (i know it seems like it here), but I dont think writing

Cows are raped & slaughtered for butter ~~the more you know!~~

with a slightly condescending undertone on a messageboard thread about popcorn is the smartest way to go about this

It's all bad no matter how it happens and it's completely unneeded, therefore it's all unacceptable.

Cows can be raped?

Do we send cow rapists to cow jail? If a cow is in a field with a bull, do we arrest the bull pre- or post- mount?

Come the fuck on buddy, obviously they are talking about humans forcefully impregnating cows to force them to produce milk.

Humans have the capability to understand the consequences of our actions, other animals don't.

why are you minimizing rape & sexual assault?

Being against sexual assault of cows minimizes it how?

By equating artificial insemination in cattle to rape.

You're just using shock tactics to garner attention. Do you even care about how your minimization affects rape & sex assualt survivors?

Sexually assaulting cows is bad just as sexually assaulting people is bad, no minimizing.

Even on the fediverse people absolutely refuse to hear about the animal abuse they support everyday..

Come the fuck on people, stop being reactionary and think about it for a minute.

The point is to be conscious about the shit you're eating and where it comes from, not to demonize butter or animal products on the whole. Factory farming is a horrid practice that I don't support but I've worked with local livestock outfits for 15 years and see the care they put into production. Not every pound of butter is wrought on a life of pure suffering, and to reject the fundamental role of death in life's process is just a bizarre and sterile approach to living.