I kicked off the blog with a post on thyme salt brussels sprout chips. The trick was to grind the thyme to a powder so that it would be light enough to stick to the chips.
I borrowed this solution from an earlier project: seasoned popcorn. I thought I’d share that here too. It’s clear that there are a lot of flavor possibilities. And if I try something that tastes bad, I’m only throwing out a bit of popcorn. It makes sense to experiment with this ingredient.
I use the recipe below for movie night at home. I don’t add salt. But my first experiment would be 8.5 parts sugar to 1.5 parts anise seed to 1 part salt. I’ll report back when I pin down a ratio.
Anise seed popcorn
Ingredients
- Unpopped popcorn kernels, as required
- 5.5 parts sugar (by weight)
- 1 part anise seed (by weight)
- Cooking fat (e.g. olive oil, butter, bacon fat)
Procedure
- Set popcorn kernels in a pot. Pour in a cooking fat and turn heat to medium high.
- As the popcorn cooks, measure out the sugar and anise seed. Grind in a mortar and pestle.
- When popping slows to about one pop per second, pour the cooked popcorn into a wide-mouthed bowl.
- Spray with oil, and season with the anise seed sugar. You will have to toss, spray, and season several times to cover multiple surfaces of each popped kernel.
