Best Butter on Popcorn

It matter which butter you use

Everything tastes better with butter on it! Even Popcorn!

The downside to adding butter to popcorn is that it adds more calories than the benefit of taste. If you're looking for a healthy batch of popcorn, I would recommend adding coconut oil that has butter flavor. Most of the calories get melted during the cooking process.

But if you want to add butter, here are some things I learned.

Five things I learned

Over the past few months I have experimented with various brands of butter. I was trying to figure out which one works the best.

1. Butter vs Margarine debate. Butter is definitely better than any margarine that I have tried. Margarine makes the popcorn taste chemically
2. At the end of the day, there was no clear winner. Store Brand butter tasted just as good as expensive Irish butter. Buying expensive butter didn???t really add much flavor to my popcorn.
3. Salted Butter vs Unsalted Butter. I like unsalted because I usually add a bit of salt anyways. Unsalted Butter gives you more cream for your buck. If you get salted you run into the risk of having different types of salt in your popcorn. Keep it simple and get unsalted and add salt - if needed
4. Extra Creamy butter - Such as Plugra and Land O Lakes - was good. I didn't encounter a lot of butter at the bottom of the bowl.
5. Kate's Creamery butter didn't really taste any different than regular melted butter. I only purchased it once as it was more expensive than store brand butter. I thought it would be better because it???s more expensive. It doesn???t really make the popcorn taste better.

Recommend Butter

The best butter I would recommend using is the Land O Lakes Extra Creamy Butter. It???s extra creamy adds just enough flavor to make the popcorn enjoyable.

Popcorn Oil

Some reviews of the oils that I tried

Over the past year, I have experimented with a lot of different oils to make really good popcorn. I have tried everything from Coconut Oil, Olive Oil, Sunflower Oil and other kinds.

There wasn't any particular oil that has stood out as a winner to really yummy popcorn.

Popcorn connoisseurs will tell you to get the perfect movie theater popcorn taste you should be using Coconut Oil. However, I think most movie theater chains now use canola oil. (No thanks to the Science for the Public Interest!)

I have found that popping with Coconut Oil will give you the "Old Time Taste." However not just any Coconut Oil will do!

Things I have Learned when Testing the Oils

Orville Redenbacher's Popping & Topping - Popcorn turns a little hint of yellow. Not much flavor. I think this is better added after the popcorn pops for flavoring. When using it as oil it mostly burns off and there's not much flavor.

Great Northern Coconut Oil - This collection of popcorn, oil, and salt gives you the best combination that tastes like the movies. The popcorn is nice and yellow and the taste is great. My complaint is that the popcorn is a little big. I think they focus more on quality oil and not on the popcorn. Never the less this is a winner in my book.

Wegmans Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil - This is good but the house smells up. The oil is clear and the popcorn is white - which is fine. I don't like how it leaves a bit of a smell that others don't like. I won't buy this again.

Wegmans Organic Sunflower Oil - Good oil. Doesn't add any real taste to the popcorn. Expensive than the other oils. Doesn't add any new flavor or texture to the popcorn. It's good if you're looking for a healthy solution.

Black Jewell Popcorn kernels

The Must-Try Popcorn!

Over the years, I have tried many popcorn kernal brands. I have tried Pop Secret, store brands, Orville Redenbacher and many others.

The one that I really like the most is Black Jewell's Original Black Popcorn.

Four Things about this Popcorn

The resulting popcorn is nice and small. They are extra crispy than standard "cheap" popcorn kernels.

You can buy this on Amazon or various online stores, including Shaws in New England. (Usually cheaper to buy in the store.)

These cook faster than typical popcorn and you don't need as much oil. Try it before adding oil as they do have good flavor without butter or salt.

When making this popcorn, you may want to use slightly fewer kernels than you usually do. The pop-up kernels may not look a lot. However, you'll soon discover that the bowl has a lot more food than your use to.

Orville Redenbacker's Presto Stirring Popper

Great Popcorn Machine!

Currently I am using the Orville Redenbacker's Presto Stirring Popper to make popcorn on a daily bases.

This is a great popcorn machine to use. Simply pour the oil and popcorn in at the same time. It makes popcorn really quick and it's really easy to clean up. The nice thing is that it stores as all one unit.

Three Tips on this Machine

I would recommend warming up the machine for about 30-seconds before putting in oil.

It takes about 6-minutes to make the popcorn. The machine doesn't stop when it's completed. I usually let it run for about 10-seconds after the last pop sound.

I have used regular coconut oil in this machine but it smells up the kitchen. Family members don't like it when I make popcorn with coconut oil - at least the raw coconut oil. Specialty popcorn oil seems to be okay.

8 oz of Popcorn is perfect for this setup. That's about a cup of kernels.