How to Revive Stale Popcorn Kernels in 10 Minutes

My husband and I are popcorn junkies. At the movie theatre, we generally buy the large popcorn, especially when I am on a Cineplex mystery shopping assignment.

At home, we own a Stir-Crazy popcorn maker and always have a Costco sized container of popcorn kernels ready to satiate those cravings. Popcorn night was frequent as we were (and still are) certified couch potatoes with lots of recorded TV shows on our PVR. ("Our" new favorite show is Madam Secretary.)

Sometime after our little man was born, our popcorn nights dropped off altogether. Popping popcorn is loud and in our cozy little place, the last thing we wanted to do is wake up the little man. Now that he is a toddler and a deep sleeper, I am relieved that our popcorn nights are back.

Earlier this year, we had purchased a 3.6 kg (8 lb) tub of popcorn. Sadly, we only managed to eat 1/4 of it when this past week, my husband discovered that the popcorn kernels had expired 7 months ago and refused to pop. At $9 for a tub, this seemed like a huge waste of money!

It was 10pm at night, Costco was closed and we craved popcorn. My husband took it upon himself to find a way to salvage the stale popcorn kernels. After searching the Internet for tips, he came across a tip to soak the popcorn kernels for a few hours.

That method would work for most people but we had Madam Secretary queued up on the PVR and we REALLY needed our popcorn fix. To placate me, my husband discovered an ingenious way to revive stale popcorn kernels in 10 minutes!

We have tried this method three times now and it revived stale popcorn from as far as a year and half ago! Yes, you read that correctly. If you have stale popcorn kernels in your cupboards destined for arts and crafts, you can likely salvage them with the method below.

In our three batches, we only had about 10 kernels in each batch that did not pop (out of 1/2 cup of kernels). Isn't this a-maze-ing?

The kernels that refused to pop.

Ingredients
1/2 cup stale popcorn kernels
Water

Directions
1. Fill a small pot with an 1-1/2 inch of water and bring it to a boil.

2. Pour 1/2 cup of stale popcorn kernels into a small bowl at least 2-1/2 inches high.

3. Cover and steam on high for 10 minutes. Make sure to monitor the water level so that it does not boil dry (my husband asked me to tell you this to prevent a potential fire hazard).

4. Take the bowl out of the pot and pop the popcorn in your popcorn machine or on the stove. In our stir-crazy machine, we noticed that the popcorn stops popping and restarts again in 30 seconds.

5. Season popcorn, eat and repeat.

Source: Frugal Allergy Mom

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