Warning – if you make this you will never be able to eat store bought caramel corn again.
On the plus side, you can have this whenever you want it, and it’s dead cheap to make.
You will need:
- A pot with a good bottom.
- A large pan. Not a cookie sheet – you need something for the oven with sides. A roasting pan will do. I use my ‘lasagna’ pan.
- A large high pot or other heat proof container – you’ll see why later. Bottom irrelevant.
- I prefer air popped popcorn, but I understand you can make this with Microwave corn. Just make sure to get the plainest type you can find – the less oil and flavourings the better.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter (not margarine). Budder works too.
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup corn syrup
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh baking soda (buy a new box, it only costs a buck.) This is important!
- 1/2 teaspoon fine ground salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Note: You will have to get up and stir this every 15 minutes for an hour. And you will have to smell it cooking for an hour before you can eat it.
RECIPE:
First – make the popcorn:
Make as much popcorn as your oven container will hold. I use a roasting pan AND a lasagna pan because I don’t like a lot of coating on my caramel corn – you may feel differently and need less popped corn. I use approximately 4 handfuls of popping corn in the air popper, or about 3 bags of microwave corn.
Preheat oven to 250.
Caramel:
In a saucepan that will hold 4-5 cups:
Add the 1/2 cup of butter slowly until melted – do not boil, do not burn. Add the 1 cup brown sugar to melted butter and stir.
Once combined add the following:
- 1/4 cup or 2 tablespoons of corn syrup
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon of fine salt
Stir and leave on a low/medium low heat for 8-10 minutes at a low simmering boil (not a roiling boil).
Remove from heat and quickly stir in the 1/2 teaspoon of FRESH baking soda and watch science happen.
Put 1/4 to 1/2 of your popcorn in the large high sided heat proof container or pot. You need to do this in the large pot because stirring in the roasting or lasagna pan is too messy. I lost a lot of caramel corn to the floor when trying to stir it in the pan. Trust me this only seems like more work but is far more prudent.
Pour 1/2 of the caramel mixture over the popcorn and gently stir until evenly coated. The hot caramel will not eat or dissolve the popcorn. At this stage you’ll be able to tell if you have enough coating or too much and can adjust accordingly by adding more popcorn or more caramel.
Spoon covered popcorn into a pan and repeat for remainder of caramel. Pot, stir, spoon into pan.
Do not put the large pan in the sink to soak, or the spoon.
Put the mixture in the oven for 15 minutes at 250 degrees.
When the timer goes off, spoon the caramel corn back into the large high sided pot and gently stir. Then spoon it back into the pan and place in the oven for another 15 minutes.
Do this 3 more times for a total cooking time of 1 hour made up of 4 stir sessions. This sounds like a lot of work but it isn’t any more complicated than rolling batches of cookies and putting them in the oven. You need to stir because the caramel when heated will slowly creep to the bottom and pool and burn in the pan if you don’t. And you’ll cry.
I have never figured out how to get peanuts to stick to the caramel corn. I think I would need to have a lot more coating on the corn that I like so just keep some handy to eat alongside the caramel corn.
Store in an airtight container. I don’t have one so I use about 3 clean plastic grocery bags that I squeeze the air out of. Air is death for caramel corn. Or you can just eat it all at once.
