Kettle Corn

I was tempted to just microwave a bag of popcorn and take a picture for the blog, but that felt a little deceitful. Truth be told, I made this delicious kettle corn and then went to take a picture and then my battery was dead. While I did beg my parents and husband to hold off on eating the popcorn for two minutes so I could photograph the popcorn that request proved impossible and the entire batch was gobbled up before I could do it. What makes matters worse is I used my very last 1/3 cup of popcorn kernels to make one meager batch of the popcorn and now I crave it almost hourly and have no way to make more until I go back to the store. Life is so hard sometimes ; )

Do yourself a favor and make this today! PS. the website I borrowed this image from is chaosinthekitchen.com, I'd never visited before but man, all of their recipes look absolutely delish!

Stove-Top Kettle Corn
by: Our Best Bites

3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
1/3 cup popcorn kernels
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
kosher salt

Place a large stock pot (or your whirly pop) on the stove top. Set heat to medium-high. Add oil. While oil is heating measure your popcorn into a small bowl. Add sugar to the kernels. Wait until you see your oil smoke. It's very faint, so get down parallel to your pot and look for little billows of smoke coming. Then pour your kernel/sugar mixture into the pot. Immediately stir using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, scraping sugar from the bottom of the pan. Only do this for about ten seconds (no one wants a popcorn kernel to peg you in the eyeball), then place the lid over the pan. Now if you are using a whirly pop, just give it a good spin every twenty seconds or so, if not then drape a dishtowel over your pot so you can hold the handles without burning your hands off. Hold the pot by the handles in a way that you're securing the lid on as well and shake pan side to side and in all directions and up and down a few times. Do this every twenty seconds (or for pete's sake just buy a whirly pop).

When you can tell that everything is popped remove the lid and stir immediately. Sprinkle with kosher salt to taste, then eat warm right out of the pan, or if it lasts long enough I suppose you could put it in a bowl. Take it a little easy on the salt though, I very nearly ruined my batch by getting a little shaker happy with my salt. Enjoy!