cheese popcorn

It is a recent development on another food-related site for a post here and there and sometimes in series to get picked up somewhere and passed around leading to their stats being all out of whack with surrounding posts. Day by day they go something like 35; 42; 14; 20; 2,400; 24; 30 and so on. And I can never predict which ones that will happen to. As if I have no sense for my audience whatsoever. What a bummer! Honestly, the dumbest posts become popular and the best ones ignored. So far, I think this cheese popcorn is the most extreme, at 2,561, but only by something like 20, Sausage, potatoes, onions and cabbage is close at 2,544.

I've been making this quite a lot lately. I follow the instructions written in this book, On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. 

Chefs keep this book around and use it like a bible. They return to it to look up passages to absorb its wisdom in doses. While just like the bible it can also be read straight through. And that's how I picked up that popcorn should not be cooked on high so that the kernels heat evenly and steadily, and that the lid should be loose-fitting or else steam will soften the popcorn. So I use a screen instead of a lid.

I don't know what the problem was back then when I was a kid and burned so many batches of popcorn. I don't know what the judgement problem was. It's obvious now when to shut off the heat and dump the popcorn. It never burns now. 

After dumping the pot is still hot enough to melt cold butter and to brown it if you want that. There's plenty of time to heat spices. 

With cheese, though, the popcorn is layered in the bowl with cheese and then heated to melt the cheese for additional layer of flavor and to make the cheese stick. It's kind of cool when it clumps. 

But I'm not so sure that Harold McGee is always right. 

I like using high heat because the kernels pop all at once better, and the screen cover does not ensure crispy popcorn.