I love Sunday afternoons lazing on the settee with a bowl of homemade popcorn watching a film with the kids – even more so now that they’re a little bit older and want to watch films that I actually have a chance of enjoying with them!
Homemade popcorn tastes much nicer than the shop bought bags of it and you don’t need anything special to make it with other than a pan with a lid. I did consider buying a popcorn maker at one point as they’re not overly expensive and I imagine that they make the process even easier but to be fair, it’s not difficult anyway so there’s no point going out and spending money on something that for the most part would just end up sitting on a shelf taking up space!
The popcorn packet will usually have the instructions for popping your popcorn but I basically heat about two tablespoons of sunflower oil in a large pan and when I think it’s hot, I add a couple of kernels of corn and pop the lid on. When they pop, I take the pan off the heat and add in the rest of my popcorn, leaving it off the heat for about 30 seconds. I give the pan a good shake and then pop the lid back on and put it back on the heat. I then wait for the popcorn to start popping which doesn’t take long at all and then as soon as the popping slows to 2 seconds or more between pops, I take it off the heat.
Today’s popcorn was a mish mash of all sorts – mini marshmallows, mini eggs, rainbow drops and some hot chocolate powder sprinkled on and it was delicious!
Our popcorn today used up little bits of things we already had in but we do have lots of other ideas for popcorn flavourings….
Plain old salted is really easy if you just add salt to the oil before you pop the popcorn. This means it will be evenly(ish) distributed on the popcorn as it cooks. You can sprinkle a little on the finished popcorn too.
You could add some pepper to your salted popcorn above just before serving to make salt and pepper popcorn.
Sweet popcorn is tastiest when it’s made by sprinkling a little icing sugar on the warm popcorn.
Sprinkle on a handful (or several) of chocolate buttons or grated chocolate when the popcorn is still hot in the pan – messy but delicious!
Cinnamon Sugar – melt 2tbsp butter and coat as much of the popcorn as you can. Then sprinkle over a mix made up of 3 teaspoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinammon.
We usually have some Nandos salt in the cupboard which is made with salt and paprika I believe and it tastes amazing sprinkled on popcorn. Most people will probably have some sort of seasoning in their cupboard – I have cajun and something called cowboy spice that I bought reduced to 15p that I haven’t been brave enough to use yet!
Grated parmesan cheese and black pepper sprinkled in makes a very grown up and very delicious popcorn.
Another savoury favourite of ours is spicy paprika. You just sprinkle your popcorn with a mix of paprika and chilli powder – exact quantities depend on how spicy you like it but I usually use around double the amount of paprika to the amount of chilli powder.
I use the Rachel Allan recipe for toffee popcorn and it’s delicious although it can be a bit faffy to make so I only make this one as a special treat.
And if I want a really special treat, I’ll make chocolate popcorn using this recipe over on Plus 2.4.
Our move of choice today was Walking with Dinosaurs which the men in the house have been dying to see and were very excited when I opened the post yesterday to find that the lovely people from Fox had sent it to us to review.
I’m not going to ruin the film by telling you too much about it but basically it follows a cute little dinosaur called Patchi as he grows from being the runt of the little into a fully grown dinosaur with lots of adventures in between.
The graphics are amazing and the story is told in a funny way that had us all laughing and I can safely say that all of us absolutely loved the film. It was much better than I was expecting and I’m sure we’ll watch it more than once over the next couple of weeks.
