Baking Bouchon - Recipe 13: Caramel Popcorn

Am I the only person who didn't know you don't need a popcorn popper or a microwave to pop popcorn?  You can just put some oil in a pot with some popcorn, turn the stove on and it will pop.  Well, you learn something every day.

The truth is I don't really care that much about caramel corn.  You know those big tubs you get at Christmas with the three kinds of popcorn in it... butter, cheddar and caramel?  I always eat the caramel last.  In fact, I do my best to find people who like the caramel so I can eat all the cheddar.  The butter is good too, but the cheddar is my absolute favorite.  The best part is that it turns your fingers orange.  That means it's good for you, just like Cheetos.

The first step to making caramel corn is to pop popcorn... shocking.  There are apparently other ways to pop the stuff without a popper, like putting the popcorn in a paper bag and microwaving it, but I tried the stove top method first and it worked so I called it popped and moved on.

Now, you must make caramel.  I love making caramel!  Watching the ingredients transform from sugary liquid to gold, delicious, caramel goodness puts a big smile on my face.  This caramel gets heated to a whopping 300 degrees which ensures that it gets nice and crunchy around that popcorn.

So, I've got my popcorn popped and my caramel almost ready and then my photography skills jumped off a cliff.  You see, once the caramel is ready you have to act really quickly to get it on the popcorn and mixed before the caramel cools and hardens.  So, I apologize for the lack of documentation of the next steps.

Just picture in your mind 300 degree caramel.  It's hot, be careful.  I added baking soda and salt to it and totally foams up as I stirred it in.  Apparently this foaming helps the caramel coat the popcorn better.  Then I stirred in some peanuts and dumped the whole mixture into a hot bowl with the popcorn and stirred with purpose.  Having the bowl hot give you a little more time before the caramel hardens.

I kept stirring and stirring and stirring until all the popcorn was coated with the caramel, peanuty goodness.  It didn't take long (1-2 minutes tops) before the caramel cooled and stirring didn't really do any more good.  I think I did a fairly decent job getting all the kernels coated.

There you have it, caramel corn.  I've never had caramel corn with peanuts in it before, but I really like the addition.  The fact is that I've been picking out the peanuts and eating them.  Who needs popcorn when you've got caramel coated peanuts.

Now, somebody pass me the cheddar popcorn.
Julie