It is too difficult to make moist
popcorn
I wrote here that I
spray a mist of water on popcorn to make it a bit more moist, and to
make a mixture of tumeric, Stevia, and salt adhere to the popcorn.
Since then I have
come to the conclusion that it is
too difficult to increase the moisture to an appropriate level.
Fortunately, I have discovered a method of making popcorn that I
prefer.
Specifically, make the popcorn crispy
instead of moist.
We have genetic preferences with food
Humans and animals have
preferences for
flavors, odors, and textures of food. When popcorn first comes out of a
hot air popcorn maker, it is acceptable to
all of us, but it is not exactly what we want from a food. As a result,
most people will put something on the popcorn to make it more
emotionally pleasing, such as butter, flavored oils, salt, honey, or
spices.
I spent a bit of time experimenting with increasing the moisture with a
mist of water, but the spray bottle would put too much water on some
the kernels and too little on others. Also, sprinkling it with a
mixture
of tumeric and salt (with some Stevia to compensate for the bitterness
of the tumeric),
would often result in some kernels that were too salty.
I now create crispy popcorn
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I purchased a
spray bottle
like the one in the photo to the right. They create a very fine mist,
which makes it convenient
for spraying foods. They do not claim to be intended
for use with food, so I hope no dangerous chemicals are leeching out of
the plastic components. (The two bottles I bought had short
lifetimes, but I could take one of them apart and fix it, to a certain
extent. As with many modern products, they are low-quality and not
designed to be repaired.)
I fill the bottle with water that has been nearly saturated with salt.
This
allows me to spray the popcorn with minuscule amounts of salt, thereby
giving me much better control over its saltiness, which in turn makes
it easy to avoid excessive amounts of salt.
I no longer put salt into the mixture of turmeric and Stevia.
I continue to have the problem that some popcorn kernels get a lot of
turmeric,
and others get none, but that does not bother me because I am not very
sensitive to the
level of turmeric.
However, I am very sensitive to the level of salt on foods.
For some reason, there is not much of a difference between "too little"
and "too much" salt.
By comparison, when adding sugar to foods, the range between "too
little" and "too much" is very large,
so it's much more difficult to add "too much" sugar.
Actually, we can eat pure sugar and honey without any problem. Adding
"too much" sugar to something
often makes it taste better.
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I begin by
popping the popcorn, and I then spray the
popcorn with a slight mist of saltwater, and then sprinkle it with a
mixture of turmeric and Stevia. Then I give it one more mist with the
saltwater to help the turmeric adhere to the popcorn.
Update: I was
using the
hot air popcorn machine to dry the
popcorn by putting a cardboard tube into the popcorn maker (photo
to the right) to make it easier to
direct the hot air onto the popcorn while keeping my hand cool, but the
machine would sometimes shut off from becoming overheated, so now I use
my hand-held heat gun.
It is more comfortable to hold; it is less
noisy; and it makes the popcorn become crispy at a faster rate because
it produces hotter air.
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The four photos
below show the difference in the texture of the "normal" and crispy
popcorn.
The two photos below show that when an ordinary kernel of popcorn is
crushed with a flat object,
it tends to remain in one piece and become compressed, rather than
break into pieces.
It ends up resembling a
smooth piece of Styrofoam.
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The
photo above shows an "ordinary" popcorn kernel from a hot air popcorn
popper. |
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The same
popcorn kernel after I crushed it with a flat object. |
When a crispy popcorn kernel is crushed, it
shatters into jagged pieces rather than compress. The two photos below
show one of the jagged pieces from one crispy popcorn kernel that I
crushed with the same object and in the same manner as the kernel in
the photos above.
It was difficult
to get a photo of the shattered kernel because it was bright
white, so I had the light shine from the side. It looks like a torn,
jagged piece of Styrofoam, rather than a smooth piece of Styrofoam.
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The
photo above shows one of the shattered pieces of one crispy popcorn
kernel.
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The photo
above is a close-up of the center section of the photo to the left.
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The crispy popcorn is more
fragile
than a corn or potato chip because
popcorn has some very thin sections, so it has to be handled with care
to prevent it from breaking into pieces.
Why would I prefer extremely dry popcorn?
Considering that I dislike the dry popcorn from a hot
air popcorn machine, it seems bizarre that I would enjoy the
popcorn by making it even more dry.
My explanation for this apparent contradiction is
that I
prefer the dry, crispy popcorn for the same reason that almost
everybody loves crispy corn chips and potato chips, and why so many
people like to fry their foods in hot oil.
Specifically, for a still unknown
reason, humans love crispy foods.
We love crispy chicken skins, crispy potato skins, and the crispiness
that deep
frying gives to battered fish, French fries, apple fritters, and
hundreds of other food items. Some people deep fry cookies, fruit,
chunks of lasagna,
pieces of pizza, and candy bars.
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When we heat
certain fruits to a certain temperature, they become less tart, which
is why a deep-fried strawberry will taste better than the underripe
berries that most markets are selling.
We get the same effect by heating the fruit in a toaster oven,
baking it into a pie, or cooking it into a jam, but those techniques
will not provide us with a crispy coating.
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Are fried foods healthy?
Considering that we love
crispy foods, we ought to fund a variety of research programs
to resolve the issue of whether fried foods are unhealthy, as some
people claim.
When I was a child, we were told by "nutritional experts"
that butter
was dangerous, and that we should switch to margarine.
Now we are told to eat butter rather than margarine. We were also told
that high fructose corn syrup
was healthy,
but now we are told to avoid it.
We ought to resolve these issues rather than continue to suffer from
contradictory health advice.
Are all types of fried food
harmful?
Or is fried food harmful only when we set the temperature "too high"?
How many times can we use the oil in a deep fryer before it should be
replaced?
Are all of the oils and fats equally unhealthy for frying?
Would fried foods be healthier if the frying was conducted in an
oxygen-free environment?
Are there better methods of
making crispy foods?
Even if we discover that
fried foods are healthy, there might be some methods to make certain
foods crispy that don't leave the food oily and messy. In the case of
popcorn, I use hot air to make the popcorn crispy, rather than fry it
in oil.
Perhaps we could use hot air, dehydrators, freeze-drying, or
dehumidifiers to
reduce the moisture in certain other foods, such as the skin of a
chicken, or
the flavored batter that a piece of fish has been dipped into. Those
techniques would increase the cost of our meals, and it would probably
be impractical for consumers to do them in their home, but in a
different culture, such as my fantasy city of Kastron,
it would be practical for the businesses and/or restaurants to do it.
Actually, the businesses and restaurants in Kastron could afford a
machine
that sprays items with a fine mist of boiling saltwater, or boiling
syrup,
so that the water evaporates without the need of any, or much, hot air.
That would make it easy to give nuts, popcorn, and other items a light
coating of salt or sweetness.
The concept of putting food through processing techniques that make it
more expensive, such as giving a chicken a blast of cold air to freeze
only the skin, and then putting it through a freeze-drying process to
make the skin dry and crispy, brings up an issue that everybody should
spend
some time thinking about. Specifically, what do we want from
life?
My suggestion is that we be less concerned about increasing the size of
our home and the quantity of our material items, meals, sex, children,
awards, leisure time, travel trips, and trophies, and be more concerned
about increasing the quality
of our homes, health, meals, material items,
friendships, marriages, jobs, work environments, swimming areas,
city parks, transportation systems, recreational activities, and other
culture.
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