Ghee, or Indian-style clarified butter, is butter that’s been simmered and the milk solids (proteins and sugars) skimmed off. This leaves a clear yellow oil that doesn’t smoke when it’s heated and doesn’t go rancid quickly, but has a distinct toasty butter flavor.
Popcorn fans often want a buttery flavor, but plain butter is a bad choice for popping popcorn in a pot, because the proteins and sugars smoke and burn around the same temperature where it’s hot enough to pop the kernels.
Vegetable oil is either flavorless or faintly bitter, and some high-temperature vegetable oils tend to start polymerizing (i.e. becoming plastic) when heated in small amounts. This is also not good for popcorn.
Good-quality popcorn popped in ghee reliably produces lots of “butterfly” popcorn with few unpopped “duds” and no scorched kernels or batches ruined by smoke.
Try it! I’m sure not going back to canola oil.
@fubo
I agree. Ghee is very nice for popcorn. And for everyone who isn’t into milk products, vegetable ghee has the same qualities and flavor profile.what is vegetable ghee?
@xuxebiko https://roshnisanghvi.com/blogs/nutrition-tips/top-3-vegan-butter-or-ghee-alternatives
Next time use a search engine of your choiceNone of them are ghee. They’re all interesterified vegetable fat/ oils with ghee flavour added calling themselves “vegan ghee” to con the gulllible.
There’s no harm in being vegan, but it is foolish to fall for unhealthy products because they brand themelves as vegan/ vegetable-based.
Stick to vegetable oils but ffs don’t call them ghee.Interesterified oils increase heart-disease risk by lowering HDL (good) cholesterol and raising LDL (bad) cholesterol, (like trans fats do). And they increase the risk of type 2 diabetes by raising fasting blood-glucose levels and decreasing insulin response. They also increase liver cellular stress markers.
Look up the effects of interesterified vegetable fat/ oils on a search engine of your choice and then read their labels before recommending them.
@xuxebiko
I’m no expert in these matters. But I can’t imagine ghee (clarified butter) being very healthy either in large quantities. If you are vegan (which I’m not) this a way to taste the op’s popcorn suggestion. I get the feeling you already had an opinion on the whole ghee/fake vegan ghee thing. And al I can say is, in the Indian cuisine, with a relatively large vegan population, fake ghee is a thing. Not some hipster hype.
This was about taste and cooking. Not about health.
@fubo
Never tried Ghee. I usually use canola, coconut, or bacon grease. I’m up for more buttery flavor though. Thanks!
Bacon grease sounds incredible. How much of the flavor ends up in the popcorn?
Sounds a bit like that bacon popcorn…
It’s subtle, but I only use just enough to pop the kernels. I also have a jar of it by the stove most of the time.
We use non-virgin olive oil. High smoke point, but good flavor.
Don’t some companies sell “popcorn oil”? What is that made of?
Oil and artificial flavors. I’ve tried a lot of them and none of them have a “real” butter flavor. It’s more of a greasy feel than taste.
soybean oil, usually. and diacetyl can be added as a buttery flavoring.
fun fact: diacetyl inhaled in large enough doses can cause bronchitis. this was a problem in popcorn topping factories, hence the term “popcorn lung”
smacks forehead
That is a great idea! Coconut oil was ok,but kinda odd-flavored for popcorn …
Since ghee is so expensive, I usually do coconut oil and ghee mixed!
I love ghee on my stovetop popcorn! A wok works great!
Go to youtube and watch how to make ghee. It’s quite simple. I use butter to make mine. I won’t buy expensive storebought again because it’s so cheap and simple to make.
Dude, my mom makes ghee out of milk. It costs literally nothing
to make ghee at home costs lots of milk, time, and effort. Try making ghee yourself from cratch and you’ll know exactly how much it really costs.
That’s not true because you still have to buy the milk.
Not if you’re a mom 😉
Tiddy butter popcorn is a sentence crafted by war criminals to torture the goodness from the world.
Ghee sounds awesome for popcorn! I use refined coconut oil and Flavacol at the moment.
Coconut oil for popcorn?! How does that affect the taste?
You must use refined coconut oil. As long as it is refined, there is no coconut flavor. It basically just tastes like theatre popcorn, because that’s what they use. They just use a fancier version that has beta-carotene in it, for a nice yellow coloring.
Olive oil here. The market nearby doesn’t sell canola oil because it was never popular. MSG is also great on popcorn.
Nutritional yeast is also amazing. Gives it a cheesy flavor, and it’s healthy to boot!
Nutritional yeast, chicken salt, and ghee for the oil is my go to. Absolutely delicious.
wait how can it be indian butter I thought they don’t exploit cows there
No, most Indians aren’t vegan, just vegetarian. They just don’t kill cows (and this isn’t universal, some areas don’t care).
But I thought Indians were a monolith
…holy shit you’re a genius.
**gheenius
Is this a protip to make popcorn more enjoyable when Reddit goes to shit on the 1st of July? 😅So store bought ready to pop microwaveable “buttered” popcorn is not with ghee, right?
No, it’s not made with ghee. Microwave popcorn “butter” is typically artificially flavored oil.
For any dairy intolerant or vegan people here you can get a similar effect by clarifying a vegetable spread like Flora and adding salt until it tastes ‘buttery’ enough for you
After reading this post a few days back, I was inspired to get some Ghee and try it out. Absolutely delicious, thank you @[email protected]!
Coconut oil
Peanut Oil is the answer. High smoke point, taste negligible.
I’ve always just used avocado oil. Sometimes coconut oil but that obviously leaves a faint hint of coconut that not everyone likes. I’ll try ghee next time but I never heard of anyone trying to make pop corn with just butter in the pan. That sounds like a mistake folks only make once! lol
The makers of my commercial-grade popper recommend coconut oil. Like you, I am interested in trying ghee. It’s good to just have a bottle of that stuff handy for lots of things.
I think ghee is clarified butter.
They are pretty much the same thing. Clarified butter can be skimmed as soon as the milk solids begin to separate. Ghee is cooked until the solids become browned and settle to the bottom, giving it more of a nutty flavor.
