Monday, January 26, 2009

Quick Class- Microwave Popcorn

As I was making my own microwave popcorn at work today I realized that a number of people probably don't know you can make your own for next to nothing. Since telling you how to do it takes all of one minute it's hardly class worthy. So how to get the information to you...? The blog! So here's the first in a series of quick classes. Look for how to make your own laundry soap for pennies coming next.

MICROWAVE POPCORN

What you need
a brown paper bag about lunch size or so
popcorn
whatever stuff you want to put on your popcorn

Place about 1/4 of a cup of popcorn into the brown paper bag and fold it over tightly a few times. To be honest you can use one staple to hold it together but I've found that folding over works fine and frankly you don't even need to fold it over that well... usually the top of the microwave keeps the bag folded over.

Place bag with popcorn into the microwave and set for about 5 minutes. You're not actually going to use this much time but it will usually be enough no matter how much popcorn you're making.

Start the microwave and hang out in the same room with it. You'll want to catch it before the popcorn burns so keep your nose and ears on the microwave. You'll also want to make sure the bag doesn't open or you might have a pretty decorated inside to your microwave. Personally I've never had this happen but the microwave at my work is pretty small.

Once you feel like you've let it pop enough stop the microwave and let it sit for a few seconds to make sure everything that's going to pop has popped. This time will vary depending on how much popcorn you're making and your microwave.

Take it out, pour it into a bowl and cover with whatever yumminess you want.

Done! And if you don't use the staple you can just keep using that bag for a very long time.

Not only is this a heck of a lot cheaper then microwave popcorn but it doesn't have any of the nasty stuff being found to cause lung disease that's in the regular microwave popcorn.

Popcorn at work for about 20 cents... what's not to love?

5 comments:

Robj98168 said...

How cool! I cant wait to try this!

healinggreen said...

I have been wanting to eat more popcorn for the last year or so, but somehow don't get around to it very often -- and now I have a reason not to resent my microwave (which sees very little use and seems to take up an inordinate amount of space on my countertop)! AND I just ordered some bulk organic cheddar popcorn flavoring. It should be sitting on my porch in a box tonight when I get home: can you guess what is for dessert doing movie-time tonight? Thanks for posting this :)

healinggreen said...

I was so excited when I saw this post and read the easy instructions... then we tried it. It worked great for about the first half of the popcorn, and then while the second half was popping the first half began smoking, and then burning!! We tried it twice, so it wasn't a fluke. The corn was totally plain, like in the instructions, in a brown bag. What seems to have happened upon inspection is that sugars in the corn caramalized and then burned. It was quite a scary sticky, and stinky mess. So disappointed!

The popcorn was, granted a few years old, so maybe too many starches had converted to sugars, so I may give it another try sometime with some fresh popcorn. Any ideas what went wrong?

Seattle Free School said...

Healing- try using less popcorn and stopping it before anything starts to smoke. You will not pop all kernals this way but you can always try to reuse the ones that didn't pop the first time. I've never had anything smoke but again you need to sit by your microwave and stop it long before anything smells like smoke. Again, if you walk away for even a second this isn't going to work well for you... you need to sit, watch and stop it before things burn... but we're talking 2-3 minutes here so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Do try new popcorn as I've done this tons of times at work without issue.

Unknown said...

Healing Green needs to:
a) make sure the corn isn't dried out.Put the corn in a mason jar with a tsp water,shake & refrigerate for a day. The moisture content needs to be ~ 10%
b)make sure there's not too much corn in the bag- only a layer of a few kernels on the bottom of the bag. And make sure the bag is "plumped up" after you close it (NOT FLAT). The popped corn needs room.