Salty Sweet Popcorn

My name is Melissa, and I’m a popcorn-aholoic.
Hello, Melissa.

When I was in college, I went through a stage where I ate nothing but oatmeal and popcorn for every meal for weeks. Do NOT do this! I was in heaven, but extremely nutrient deficient. I’m sure my cholesterol levels were super low though (just a little rip on the oatmeal company and their promise to lower cholesterol). If you hadn’t figured out by now, my obsession with oatmeal has not lessened in any way, and neither has my love of popcorn.
I buy popcorn kernels in mass quantities at Costco every time I pay a visit to my parents in Chicago. I learned long ago that homemade popcorn blows bagged popcorn out of the water, in taste and in healthiness (5 cups of air-popped popcorn is only 100 calories! AND it’s packed with fiber!). Although I don’t have an air popper like at my grandparents’ house, I do keep the calories low by popping my kernels in a small amount of canola oil in a non-stick pan. For dieters out there, this is the perfect food to get you through the day or to substitute for dessert. I even take gallon-size bags of it to the movies with me because the smell of movie popcorn is too intoxicating to pass up! (Yes, I realize that bringing your own food to the movies is frowned upon, but are you seriously telling me that you don’t fill up your “party purse” with candy bars and soda/water bottles before you go to the movies?? So what’s the difference when bringing your own popcorn? Take that!)

Tonight’s popcorn is my healthy, salty sweet popcorn, which is a slight ode to kettle corn. I love the combo of salty and sweet, and because I don’t need things drenched in sugar anymore, this is the perfect alternative to kettle corn. It is cooked in a slightly different way than normal stovetop popcorn because you don’t want to burn the sugar.

~heat 1 tsp of canola oil in a heavy non-stick pot (I have one that is purely my popcorn pot). Put 2 kernels into the pot and put the lid on, heat on med-high, and wait until the kernels pop which means your oil is ready
~add 2 Tbs of kernels, 1 tsp of sugar (I put these two items in a small ramekin, waiting by the pan so I’m ready to toss it in), and put the lid back on. Immediately reduce the heat to medium. Swirl and carefully shake the pot, keeping the kernels moving as the sugar caramelizes. Once the popping slows to a stop, remove from the heat. Take off the lid, spray the popcorn with a zero-calorie butter substitute, and sprinkle with salt. Pour into a bowl and gobble it up!!

Trust me, this is not the only popcorn recipe I will be sharing, because I have a ton of them and I absolutely love popcorn. Have I said how much I love popcorn yet?

Strike up a conversation: You’re slowly learning the foods I am obsessed with (they’re surprisingly simple, right?), so what are your’s?