Pantry Raid: Popcorn Edition

hi everybody Alton Brown here in the brain food industries test kitchens pretty much not even running a skeleton crew right now just myself and two other people in the whole building because hey somebody's got to feed the Kabuki you know and the and the the sourdoughs and things like that anyway I thought that you know since there's a lot of food around here and you might have some food around your house you might want to to do some cooking during these challenging times and today I thought that maybe we would we'd make some popcorn my way because you're probably streaming a lot of movies and and there's no place to get popcorn so come on over okay so here at bring food we have a lot of popcorn popcorn fan we have it left over from from our live touring show where we used a lot of popcorn popcorn doesn't last forever just so you know it will eventually dry out but typically you've got a few years all you really need is that moisture to still be locked in the the endosperm we will be using the Good Eats method which I printed out from one of the good eats books but I've made a few changes because I'm going metric now and I'm changing up the fat but the methodology is the same and if you saw our popcorn show you don't have to watch this because you already know how to do it I do not use a popcorn popper I do not like them I use a bowl it's a relatively heavy gauge this is a an 8 quart Bowl who made in Brazil imported now the original recipe was written for 3 ounces of popcorn kernels I've rounded that up to a hundred grams and I have weighed that so 100 grams is what I'm using and hey since we're all locked up and you know isolated and hunkering down or what do they call it sheltering in space or I don't know whatever it is learn the metric system your life will be better when we come out the other side so 100 grams things are very loud in here right now because it's very close hundred grams goes into the bowl now when it comes to fat some people actually like to pop with butter don't do that because the milk solids are going to burn in the bottom of the bowl it will be gross my old recipe calls for peanut oil which i think is relatively nice and clean I live in Georgia there's a lot of this stuff I mean they hand it out at the border but in this case I'm gonna use something that's actually more flavorful this is D which we made here in the in the kitchen for a one of the good eats projects we are working on and it is basically clarified butter that's allowed to cook a little bit more we've got videos about that coming out with our new season of good eats reloaded you can use ghee if you know how to make it or clarified butter or just use the oil I'm gonna use it because I think it tastes good and I am going to go with 38 grams okay we originally called for three tablespoons of peanut oil but I'm gonna go with 38 grams and again you don't have to weigh it if you're using something liquidus liquid I'm just doing this because I can't and I like weighing things that's 18 there's 30 it looks like a lot but trust me it's not as much as it looks 38 holy smokes 38 grams okay that's going in I know that looks like a lot of fat but I rather pop in the fat and not add any later okay so that's the ghee you would use the same amount if it was oil it's roughly three tablespoons now I also like to pop with the salt already in place I don't like to solve the popcorn afterwards it'll be much more evenly done if we do it beforehand but I want to use popcorn salt we don't have any popcorn salt I would never buy popcorn salt popcorn salt is a very fine salt okay you want it to be very fine salt too little stick on to the kernel so we're just gonna make that c'mere okay so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna run some kosher salt through this coffee grinder here we only need really half a teaspoon no a little extra I'm just going to grind that up for a few seconds you washed your hands I washed my hands right before we started it's why I'm not wearing a watch because well offline that later okay there we go nice fine salt it's a very very fine powder now I'm gonna add about half a teaspoon you only have one measuring spoon make it up make it a teaspoon all right that's enough of that now we need a lid but mmm you know people don't typically have lids for 8 quart bowls so I'm gonna use heavy-duty foil and close it really tightly around the edges and that's mostly to make it physically easy to manipulate and then we're gonna poke some holes I'm just gonna use a knife looks like it's left over from a cafeteria 8 9 10 yep that looks pretty good okay here we go over onto the clock cooktop the clock top and I'm gonna go with kind of not the highest heat I've got because it's gonna take a minute to get the the butter to melt now for shuffling this around we're gonna have to do some jiggling once the popping starts I just use sigh towels to hold the bowl some people use tongs I think it's difficult okay I can hear the butters melting can you hear that we're gonna give it a swash it actually takes quite a bit of heat to build up before the popcorn will start popping don't bother timing this just just stand here I mean you don't have anything else to do right I mean you could at this point get out your phone and check social media and panic some more but let's not let's just you can yell other kids how many I told you not to I'm gonna come over there stuff like that because you need to keep them on their toes otherwise just enjoy here we got one steam coming out the main reason that we want to let the steam vent is because the steam stays in there it's going to make the popcorn soggy so we want some steam release okay go on it's burn the whole idea of using a bowl by the way is that as it pops the pop kernels will rise up the sides and the unpopped kernels will go down to the bottom so it kind of makes sense from a physics standpoint let it go you'll ultimately know it's done when about right now we're we're we're in pop land time for more delicious coffee this is a YouTube video and not Food Network so I can use brand names Reynolds Wrap heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap foil do not use any other brand as far as I'm concerned riddle rats got it I will be able to reuse this like ten times okay all right turning off the heat and we'll we'll give a look alright I think we got we've got decent Papa CH yeah I got a few burn pieces but I might I'm not gonna panic or freak out because I can I'm gonna put so much flavor on this stuff and we can always force the kids to eat it anyway don't worry about now when it comes to flavorings we've already got the salt on there right I'm only doing this because I'm gonna have three different flavors to your sunburn pieces here we go I've got a little hand sit here for sprinkling on some flavors and these are these are my favorites okay we'll start with the stuff that's really common this is just nutritional yeast seasoning and you know it's it's hippies and you know granola eaters and people they wear Birkenstocks like to stuff a whole heck of a lot I do too though it is pretty delicious it's dead yeast basically and so I'm gonna spread that sprinkle that here it comes in a flake maybe you can see this if you haven't used this stuff before and you can leave it that way in a flake form if you want or you can kind of grind it up between your fingers just pinch and sprinkle it on you can be like that bad internet guy and so I'm gonna give that a taste is very healthy very good for you yep delicious earthy I always think it tastes a little bit like old beer because after all it's useless um we're gonna do my favorite one next this is a Japanese product call furikake which I use to call furry kaki when I was a kid it is a rice seasoning you get this a lot in the sushi bars and it contains the following sesame seed sugar seaweed salt maltodextrin disodium and blah blah blah in other words probably msg it's mostly like nori that's been ground up with sesame seeds and that is delicious on popcorn and then here's one you'll have to get this off the interwebs this is cheese powder okay and you can get this off of the interwebs I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say what website because I mean let's face it there's only one that you can buy anything from anymore apparently it is completely natural it's just cheese turned magically into powder by demons or small aliens or something like that so I put a little bit of that and this is how you make your your cheese popcorn there should be enough fat on the popcorn already you shouldn't have to add it more so I'm gonna go take my popcorn I think I'm gonna do the cheese one and and maybe it made maybe this and I'm gonna go stream some old good eats episodes and laugh at myself back when I had hair and oh yeah the person that usually cleans up after me isn't here so I just won't come back in here

Channel: Alton Brown

Views: 1,564,418

Keywords: Alton Brown, Cooking, Popcorn, Food, Eating, Recipes

Id: OBY5L3Ia9nY

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Mikhaildaily]

Whirely pop is the best though.

[u/AlwaysQueso]

Ah an Alton Brown, classic! I used to do this all the time! It doesn’t work as well with an electric burner so I stopped using this method.

[u/pipsqeek]

I've always made popcorn in a wok. Virtually the same, and it has a handle. Great video using the stainless bowl.