Making the best Popcorn

[Carsten Kurz]

You can't keep normal butter from burning, if you make popcorn in a traditional popper,

Well, yes you can, as I said, you just don't add butter at the beginning, but at the end. You start with a regular amount of standard popping oil.

It takes some time to burn the butter, and if you add it during the final phase of the popping process, it will not be heated long enough to burn.
Clarified butter indeed is extremely expensive and may only be acceptable for occasional domestic use.

[Jon Dent]

I always wondered, how do americans eat popcorn that has been soaked with butter or other toppings? What do you do with your greasy fingers afterwards?

Classy customers use napkins. The rest use their pant leg or the chair armrests

At least they're easy to clean.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The best popcorn is made in a vacuum. You get much larger kernels, its a lot fluffier, and tastes way better. We did this years ago in Physics class in High School, and it's not as difficult as you may think. You need a vacuum pump and an appropriate container who's lid can hold a seal to the kettle while under vacuum,. and a vacuum gauge on the lid of the kettle. Now, scale that up for a movie theater....

[Scott John]

I'm new to the Theatre industry and bought a single screen in my hometown in March 2020 right before the Covid shutdown. It's my hobby to my primary ISP business so it didn't hurt me but I'm learning as much as I can.

When I bought it, the owners were using Sam's Club kernels, LouAna coconut oil, LouAna butter flavored topping, Snappy fine salt for popping and shaker salt.

Since then, I have switched to Pop Weaver Gold kernels, still using LouAna coconut oil, and Funtastic butter flavored topping, Flavacol salt in each batch we pop, and keeping Snappy fine salt for the shakers.

I have read old forums posts about people liking Supur-Kist topping from ODell's. Is this the way to go for topping?


What is everyone using for their great tasting theatre popcorn? Kernels, popping oil, topping, salts, maybe your kettle like Cretors or something else?

I'm willing to try new things in order to offer great tasting popcorn. Our current popcorn tastes better than the multiplexes near us but if I can make it even better, I want to.

You could always offer real butter at an extra cost if many of your customers like it the way it is. That way you give some choice and can actually use it as an upsell.

[Scott John]

Hello.
I think here in Spain we don't make the popcorns in the same "american" way you make it there.

I read you use "topping" oil or melted butter, So you put the oil over the pop corn once they are popped or you put the oil (or butter) in the pan with the corn??

Here most of cinemas (including us) put sunflower vegetal oil (I don't know where to buy coconut oil) at the beginning of the corn cooking, and the salt too (powdered salt), and that's all.

Can you tell me (or show me a video) about cooking your "american style" pop corns?

Here, butter is more than 4€/Kg, that is very very much expensive than sunflower oil, but I think popcorn are sold cheaper here than in the US,

I have always wondered how the temperature of the casserole influences the result of the popcorn, in its crunchiness. Our CRETORS machine don't let change their temperature value.

We think we need to offer our customers new things, to atract them to the cinema instead let them rest at home with their 65" oled TV screens and films from Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix...,

Most of times, USA lead the cinema industrie (with permission from bollywood) and go one step ahead, so it would be very interesting know what's new there.

Thanks!!

This is how I do it in Canada. Some coconut oil in the kettle to pop and with some flavacol.

We do also offer (real) butter as a topping once it is in the bag, we layer a little halfway and then a little more on the top. Really we don't use much at all, just an extra bit of flavour. Since butter is so expensive, we offer extra butter for those that want it at a 50 cent charge and probably half our customers ask for it. We don't make a ton even at that extra charge (our local multiplex charges $2 for ANY real butter topping). The butter cost for us is almost as much as the popcorn and bag together.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm not sure if this is the best popcorn, but it certainly is an efficient way to distribute it over short distances:

[Darin Steffl]

We have a cretors Kettle from 98 and we're getting lots of smoke when popping now. We have an exhaust hood. I have carnival king Kettle cleaner that we've used to boil and clean much of the carbon deposits away but it still smokes while popping and a lot after the last batch.

I don't think it's normal and it seems to smoke more than it used to. For the agitator, popcorn gets stuck under the spinners. Is that not supposed to happen? Some of the agitator arms were spinning right in the bottom of the Kettle so we bent them up so there's a little gap but maybe that's a problem with popcorn getting stuck underneath and burning.

Our popcorn also is starting to taste a little more burnt than normal. I thinking I'm going to contact cretors for a manual and read through it about what maintenance they require. I'm also wondering if there's a need for a tune up that checks through the whole thing for problems like thermostat, optimal temperature while heat is on, etc.

Any advice for us to improve our quality while figuring out some of these issues? Also, anyone use LouAna coconut oil, have you noticed a change in taste and smell of the oil while popping? It used to smell great when we popped but now it smells like food fat maybe like bacon. The taste of the popcorn isn't quite as good either. I've narrowed it down to the oil because as soon as I pump the oil into the Kettle and smell inside, I smell this foul, fat smell that never used to exist with the coconut oil.

[Gordon McLeod]

If it is smoking you may have the thermostat set too high. Also what type of oil are you using, they all have different smoke temperatures?

[Darin Steffl]

We're using LouAna colored coconut oil. Ventura foods, the manufacturer responded that they had a bad tank of coconut oil in August that caused the bad odor or aroma when popping.

Cretors should be able to provide some guidance on checking the thermostat hopefully.

[Don Furr]

It could be there's too much heat on the kettle. First thing I would do is install a new thermostat. If it's an original one it's past time to replace it. A new thermostat solves a lot of issues with a Creators popper.

[Carsten Kurz]

Our kettle has two independent thermostats - one to reach the proper popping temperature, one is a security thermostat. The latter is to prevent oil fires/explosions, as these oils have a flash point close to or slightly above 300 degree celsius, which some machines can reach if a single regular thermostat fails and the kettle keeps heating forever. Our safety thermostat opens around 280 degree celsius, our regular one around 250 degree celsius.

A few times during the last 15 years, we did notice that the kettle temperature went to high, oil and popcorn burns, and, typically, when we open the kettle, we find that the regular thermostat has stopped working. The regular thermostat fails more often than the security device, as the latter one should hardly ever be activated - IF you care enough to check the kettle every now and then.

I also bought a simple Pyrometer to check kettle temperature switching.
Boilovers or oil explosions are no fun. Often, these machines are operated by unexperienced teenagers. You don't want to justify yourself towards them or their parents after they've lost their pretty face...

[Mike Blakesley]

We have two salt shakers on the counter: Regular popcorn salt, and Flavacol. We put about a heaping teaspoonful of Flavacol in with the popcorn when it's popping, but some people will absolutely pour on more Flavacol (especially teens). Overall we go through way more Flavacol in the shakers than the regular salt. Some people think (because it's yellow) that it's "cheese" flavor, so we're constantly correcting that misconception.

As for the "butter in the middle" thing -- we do that by default. The bigger the container, the more middles there are -- if you buy our 170 oz Jumbo you get three middle layers of butter flavor. With the small 46 oz we just put the buttery stuff on top unless somebody asks for more. I would say about 5% of people ask for "no butter" or "light on the butter" and maybe 20% ask for extra butter.

What I get a kick out of is "large sized" people asking for "extra butter" on their jumbo popcorn, but then they buy a small Diet Pepsi.

[Darin Steffl]

We have two salt shakers on the counter: Regular popcorn salt, and Flavacol. We put about a heaping teaspoonful of Flavacol in with the popcorn when it's popping, but some people will absolutely pour on more Flavacol (especially teens). Overall we go through way more Flavacol in the shakers than the regular salt. Some people think (because it's yellow) that it's "cheese" flavor, so we're constantly correcting that misconception.

As for the "butter in the middle" thing -- we do that by default. The bigger the container, the more middles there are -- if you buy our 170 oz Jumbo you get three middle layers of butter flavor. With the small 46 oz we just put the buttery stuff on top unless somebody asks for more. I would say about 5% of people ask for "no butter" or "light on the butter" and maybe 20% ask for extra butter.

What I get a kick out of is "large sized" people asking for "extra butter" on their jumbo popcorn, but then they buy a small Diet Pepsi.

Diet Pepsi has a very different taste from regular. Some people don't drink it because it's zero calories or sugar, but because the taste is better to them. Or some mix half and half because regular Pepsi can be too sweet.

[Mike Blakesley]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Maybe they learn to enjoy the aftertaste.

There's no accounting for what people like, though. Some kids ask for a "graveyard" which (in these parts anyway) is a mixture of all the flavors of soda. I have one regular customer who likes a 32oz "graveyard" with no ice. Yeeeeesh

[Sean McKinnon]

I am quite partial to a mix of 1/2 Odell’s butterfat and 1/2 superkist II