Chilli crisp goes hard on popcorn! Lao gan ma is a good brand, though homemade is far superior - I like to caramelise my onions before crisping them up, and I also like to use a variety of chillis (including some relatively hot ones)!
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I like Old Bay. But really, any seasoning blend works pretty good. If you have a spice grinder, you might consider grinding it finer so it distributes better.
I have a WhirleyPop so making kettle corn is pretty easy, since you stir the whole time.
My goto is butter plus Aromat (a flavored msg based seasoning)
Nutritional yeast, garlic powder, msg, and salt is my go to. I mix it up with other spices too but the nutch and msg reminds me of cheese puffs. Have to start with plain popcorn though, I don't like nutch with buttered popcorn.
Coconut oil and salt is also amazing.
I top my popcorn with Lawry's garlic salt. Tastes great on actual corn too.
I'm a big fan of the Cheesy Seasoning Blend at Trader Joe's!
I'm not a big popcorn guy, but have a garlic/salt/pepper mix that I put on almost everything I can. I bet it'd be good on popcorn.
You could probably go with garlic salt though for something similar, if you don't like pepper. Maybe some parmesian, since that's salty too.
Greek seasoning or Zatarans Blackened Seasoning are good bets, more spice than salt
I know of Gayelord Hauser's Spike seasoning which is salt-free. I use salt for food lots of times, but Spike and melted butter elevate our popcorn's taste.
This might be the only food that is sweeter outside of the US, well, besides kettle corn.
When I eat it enough to get tired of butter and salt, I spritz on evoo or tamari/soy sauce. For spice blends, I really like the ones from Penzey’s, especially Sunny Spain, or something else that amounts to lemon pepper.
With an spice grinder it becomes a lot easier:
- Salt, msg, chili and citric acid
- Salt, dried out parmiggiano reggiano and black truffle
- Salt and msg
- Salt and nutritional yeast for that "fake cheesy" flavor
I always like to mix in some butter and sriracha
If you're willing to add some calories, oil. I got an oil sprayer. I fill it half with chili oil, half with olive oil; not too hot, but gives it a kick. Sprayed on, it doesn't put nearly as much in as being drizzled on. It helps make powdery stuff adhere to the popcorn, too.
I have a salt shaker of Flavacol, which is the "salt" part of what goes into movie theater popcorn.
Movie theaters use (or used, dunno if this has changed) palm oil. This can congeal at room temperature, so may need to be heated.
Powdered butter or powdered various sorts of cheese can be kept in the fridge and can just be sprinkled on.
Cinnamon and sugar can be sprinkled on.
Actually, for popping they mostly use coconut oil. And some places use stuff that gives the popcorn a weird coconut flavor. The stuff that they put on at the end might be /probably is palm oil based though.
To get the movie theatre experience you can use oil and butter-salt (the yellow powder they use). Try peanut oil for cooking in a pot, then butter-salt, and top with drizzle of real melted butter. Obviously not a healthy choice but it’s great.
Consider olive oil instead of butter just in general. We just do olive oil and salt but love some of the other ideas here.
I have never tried this myself, but I am curious to know how well furikake works with popcorn.
Can confirm is excellent.