Movie theater popcorn
Why does it taste so much better than the one you make at home?
shareThey pop it with a flavored, colored ultra hydrogenated grease substance. It used to be palm and coconut.
That's why it's so yellow, too.
This is even before you pump the fake butter flavor on it... this is the actual popping oil.
Didn't theatres, at one time, use actual melted butter instead of the yellow greasy gook they use now?
I'm not a fan of movie theatre popcorn, mostly because of the yellow grease. The only thing better about it than home-popped, IMO, is somehow the popped kernels are bigger and fluffier than I could ever get them.
Well I worked in chain theaters in the 80s and it was still fake butter flavoring back then.
Independant artsy theaters served real butter. There was a theater in San Francisco in the 80s that was all couches and they served real buttered popcorn in wooden salad bowls. The Red Victorian on Haight street.
But mainstream theaters have been using fake butter for pretty much my lifetime, I suppose if you go back far enough it might have been real butter.
The benefit of the fake butter flavoring is you can store it at room temperature when it's not being heated in the pump dispenser. It can be heated, cooled off, heated again, cooled off again, over and over again, and it does not break down or go bad. It stays liquid even when it's cold.
Real butter is a lot of extra work, you have to refrigerate it at night and then melt it each day. If you let it cool off in the pump dispenser, it hardens in the tubes and clogs it up.
The Red Victorian sounds great. We had several art house indie theatres where I grew up. That must be what I'm thinking of vis a vis the real butter.
I can understand the benefits of the yellow grease, but never could stand the taste or consistency of it.
I agree, when I make popcorn at home (in a pot on the stove, NOT microwave) I use a bit of real butter to top it off, but I don't cover the whole thing in butter. I start with some olive oil Pam spray just to help the salt stick and to give a little flavor, and then a small chunk of real melted butter. Of course it's better with a whole stick of butter, but I don't want to eat a stick of butter in a day. lol
The Red Vic was awesome in the 80s. they had a really eclectic programmer, so it was a mix of old movies, new art releases, student film finals festivals, cult favorites, just really cool. Then they had to move to a new location down the street and the fire dept made them get rid of the all-thrift store-couches seating. It lost some of it's Haight street hippie mojo.
Can you get the kernels to pop as big and fluffy at home as they can at the theatres? That's my only objection to home-made popcorn. I don't do microwave popcorn either.
Oh great, now I'm craving (real) buttered popcorn!
The Red Vic sounds great, much like the art theatres we had as far as programming and the rest, except no couches, just regular theatre seats. I'd prefer the thrift shop couches.
It used to be really fun to go with a group of friends and get your favorite couch.
I get the popcorn pretty big at home on the stove. You just have to keep shaking it so it doesn't burn.
Sounds like fun. I loved the indies in my neck of the woods, even though they didn't have couches.
I've tried shaking the pan (burning, or even close to it is no good) but still have never managed to get the popcorn as big and fluffy as theatre popcorn.