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?
Reader Survey: Leave me a comment below and let me know a little about you and what type of content interests you. Or head over to this 1 minute survey and let me know what type of content you want to see featured in the future. https://bit.ly/FAMReaderSurvey
 |
| 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.
NOTE: The contents and pictures in this post are property of Frugal Allergy Mom. If you would like to repost this recipe, please link back to this post. Thanks!
So glad I found this post! Totally worked like a charm!!
ReplyDeleteA-maze-ing.Thanks
ReplyDeleteWow! Turned my old kernels that resulted in chewy, tough popcorn into crunchy, light movie popcorn! Thanks so much for this great tip!
ReplyDeletethanks for the tip. Gret
ReplyDeleteI tried this just now with sort of mildly stale popcorn. I popped one batch before trying this trick, it popped just fine...but it tasted stale. So I tried this trick and then popped a second batch — no difference (well, second batch had same staleness, but the popped corn looked a bit smaller)
ReplyDeleteUpdate! After I tried the steam technique and it failed I decided to throw caution to the wind and do something insane: I threw my popped (stale) Popcorn in my air fryer and gave in about 6 mins on hottest. After cooling down a bit, it is perfect and weirdly delicious.
ReplyDeleteIt worked.
ReplyDeleteWill it work okay with a
ReplyDeletestale not properly stored with dust popcorn kernels?
Awesome tip! Thank you. 🥰
ReplyDeleteYou could do the same thing in a rice cooker with a steamer basket. Our small Aroma rice cooker has a "steam" function and a timer which would simplify the whole process. Water in the rice cooker pot; stale popcorn in the rice cooker steamer basket; press the "steam" button; set the timer for 10 minutes; grab an ice-cold beer and let the rice cooker do its thing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great idea!
You could do the same thing in a rice cooker's steamer basket. Our small Aroma rice cooker has a "steam" function. Put about 1.5 cups of water in the rice cooker pot; put 0.5 cups of stale popcorn in the steamer basket; put the lid on; press the "steam" button; set the timer for 10 minutes; grab an ice-cold beer and let the rice cooker do it's thing.
ReplyDeleteIt works! I was going to throw away my old popcorn that barely popped. After steaming it popped just like fresh kernels.
ReplyDelete