Oh my goodness, I think I've been living under a rock. I have just discovered you can actually microwave popcorn! I kid you not. Whenever I've heard people talk about microwaving popcorn I have just assumed they mean the stuff in a bag, which I don't trust as I'm sure it has lots of other random ingredients. And it's a bit pricey compared with the plain kernels. So for the last few years I've been coating my popcorn in oil and vigorously shaking a heavy pan to get it to pop, all the while wondering if I should invest in a popcorn maker as surely air-popped is healthier.
Turns out though that you can actually air-pop pure unadulterated popping corn in the microwave. I had a play around with it this afternoon and this is how you do it.
- Place popcorn in a microwaveable container with lid. Choose the smallest you can get away with and cover the base with kernels.
- Microwave on high for 2 minutes.
- Remove and sprinkle with salt, melted butter, olive oil, whatever you want really.
- Rinse dish.
It's that simple.
Next time I'm going to sprinkle the salt over the kernels and give the dish a bit of a shake before I microwave it as it was a bit bland. I am ridiculously excited about this discovery. No more nasty gunky oily pans to clean and it's quicker too.
And only 4g carbs per cup, for all you carb counters out there.
Bad points: I think there were possibly a few more unpopped kernels than usual and my serve was a bit chewy but that was from the first batch, which I'd done in a larger dish. Dish size is important as clearly the kernels need to be touching one another to generate enough energy to pop. I won't try to explain it in sciencitific terms at the risk of getting it wrong but suffice to say not covering the base of the dish with kernels resulted in poor popping performance. Clearly more testing needs to be done. Can't see the kids complaining about that.
Tip: most parents would find this a useful tip but particularly those with T1 kids. When going to the cinema take a plastic cup - one for each child - that holds 250ml and use it to dish out popcorn. Then you can a) monitor how much your kids are eating (and count carbs for the T1s) and b) keep the box for yourself. I was rather impressed with myself for coming up with this one.
2 comments:
Very impressive! I must admit that I love popcorn, but find it really hard to cook it in the microwave... I have many a disaster - under cooking and over cooking and everything in between. A while back Woolies were selling a microwave container for cooking popcorn in the microwave - I bought one thinking that this was going to be the answer to my popcorn issues...but unfortunately I still have popcorn issues! Maybe its time to start experimenting again!
I used a glass dish if that helps. Experimentation is definitely required. Please share any findings. (Intrigued by the popcorn container. Maybe I need one.)
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