Pop Your Way to Less Calories and Save Money
Monday August 10, 2009

90 calories

3 cups
per serving

Other 100 Calorie Snacks

Wasabi peas, Triscuit Dark Chocolate Covered Raisins

under 100 calories, after exercise, afternoon snack, lose weight, healthy, kid friendly, late night, morning snack, recipes, salty, sweet

You CAN make popcorn in the microwave without the prepackaged products from the supermarket. All you need is popcorn, lunch bags, tape, and some flavorings.

Why make your own Microwave Popcorn? A box of microwave popcorn sells for at least $3 and you will get 4 servings. Ordinary popcorn is about $1 a pound and you will get about 8 servings. ($6 as versus $1 - you save $5!). You will save a ton of money for just a little work.

in addition, there is concern about a chemical that is released when microwave popcorn is popped. So, since you didn't add anything but popcorn, your microwave popcorn is anxiety free!

Here is how you do it:

Put 1/4 cup popcorn in a brown paper bag. Fold top over a few times and tape it.
Place in microwave folded side upfor 2 to 3 minutes or until there is 5 seconds between pops.
Eat plain or add flavors (such as salt, butter, sugar, etc.)

What about flavorings? Well, the great thing here is now you aren't stuck with the choices on the package. In the book, "Popcorn", Patrick Evans-Hylton, writes about all sorts of things you can add including sugar (to make a carmel-corn taste), ginger and wasabi, and even BBQ sauce. His ideas are fantastic and enough to inspire any popcorn aficionado.

Check it out:

Popcorn

~~$15.95~~ $10.85

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4 Comments:

Instead of tap, you can use 2 staples placed at least 1 inch apart on the bag. Works great. No sparking from the microwave. Learned this trick from Alton Brown's cookbooks.

Einsmom on September 5, 2009

What is the minimum power output needed to properly heat/pop a bag of popcorn. I live in Prague and my current mw here is apparently too weak as it can't "pop" fast enough, and leaving it for more minutes only results in a black (burned) mucky mess. Thanks. GoodyPrague

GoodyPrague on October 14, 2009

According to Wikipedia, the kernels need to get to 180C (356F) to pop.
There is also a wealth of information at www.popcorn.org.>
If your microwave won't work, or if you don't have a microwave, you
can pop corn the old fashioned way: in a pan on the stove.

Stove Top Pop Corn from popcorn.org:

* A 3 to 4 quart pan with a loose lid that allows steam to escape
* At least enough popcorn to cover the bottom of the pan, one kernel deep
* 1/3 cup of oil for every cup of kernels (Don't use butter!)

Heat the oil to 400 - 460 degrees Fahrenheit (if the oil smokes, it is
too hot). Test the oil on a couple of kernels. When they pop, add the
rest of the popcorn, cover the pan and shake to evenly spread the oil.
When the popping begins to slow, remove the pan from the stove-top.
The heated oil will still pop the remaining kernels.

I hope this is helpful.

Snack Snoop Lisa on October 14, 2009

Funny thing...you don't need any oil for stove top popcorn. I've been popping my popcorn this way for a couple years now. You do it the same exact way..just skipping the oil step.

RossS on November 1, 2009