Thursday, September 27, 2012

Brown Bag Special - DiY Microwave Popcorn

Since Jenny took a break from Wellness Wednesday I thought I’d share some food tips today. It’s all about corn! Yup, corn. Corn is a great veggie, no cholesterol, low fat calories, no sodium, contains some good vitamins and minerals, and plain tastey.

self.com

So here are some things I’ve learned about corn recently. You can eat corn directly off the cob without cooking it. For salads and cold dishes this is awesome (Jenny shared this tip with me). It is actually sweeter if you don’t cook it. Also, you can freeze corn in the husk. Just grab some when it is cheap and pop it in the freezer. Pull it out and thaw it and off you go to throw it on the grill, shuck it and cut it off the husk for some salad…the options are really endless. To get the corn out of the cob with fewer “hairs” all you have to do is cut the very top of the husk off with the tip of the corn. Then pull the husk down as you normally would and you should end up with very few “hairs” holding on [got this tip online but cannot for the life of me find the source-it wasn’t me who came up with this brilliance] and you can rinse those last few off pretty easily.

Now, let’s talk about popcorn…yum. I am a fan of popcorn. I very much enjoy it as a snack or as a movie watching treat, sometimes I think I could just eat a bowl as a meal and to be honest at some point when I lived alone I probably did. HA! But microwave popcorn with all it’s additives is certainly not the best for anyone and I never wanted to get an air popper or cook it on the stove, but recently I discovered this WONDERFUL trick for microwave popcorn. Drum roll please…a brown lunch bag! SAY WHAT? Oh yeah, you can throw corn kernels in a brown lunch bag and stick it in the microwave. I’ve found that about a 1/3 cup of kernels is about the right amount. It will pop perfectly and tastes delicious. There is no need to add any butter, oil, etc while it is popping because the heat is what makes it pop not the oil or butter. Best of all you can add whatever extras to it you like and know what you are getting. I like to sprinkle mine with a little olive oil and parmesan cheese. Fold the top of the bag over twice because it will push open as the kernels pop. In my microwave it takes approx 2 minutes but all microwaves are different so just listen for the pops and when it starts slowing down if you can count to 3 in between pops it is finished. Once you’ve done it a couple times you’ll know the exact right timing for your microwave. [Again, this was not my brilliance but I cannot remember where online I found it].
 

 
 
 
 
 
Key loves popcorn too so she got to enjoy the tutorial bag!

Sunny Day to you,
Daspri

 

2 comments:

  1. How funny! One of my other favorite bloggers posted this post on the EXACT same day. It's apparently time for some homemade popcorn.

    http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/09/microwave-popcorn-no-bag-required.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Slightly different approach but looks good too.

    ReplyDelete

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