Homemade caramel popcorn

Homemade caramel popcorn
Originally uploaded by desireux.

I love my popcorn sweet. Popcorn in the US, especially the cinema ones and those that you pop yourself in the microwave come salty/buttery. It tastes so bland compared to the thick caramel ones I used to eat back home.

I've seen my mom make it when I was small. Tonight, after a phone chit-chat with her, I decided to go ahead and make my own with some tips on how to clean up from her. No regrets. It tastes so good.

So, to all you "I hate salty popcorn" people, here's my simple version of caramel corn.

1) Buy a packet of microwavable popcorn (mine was butter flavor) and pop according to instructions.

2) Pour about 1/3 cups of white sugar into a saucepan. I used a saucepan about 6 inches in diameter and 5 inches high.

3) Heat on the stove (medium-high heat) and stir. After a few minutes, the sugar will start to melt. Continue stirring to melt evenly.

4) Once the sugar has melted, quickly lift the pan off the stove and put in ~ 1/3 of the packet of popcorn and stir around to coat the popcorn with your caramel (melted sugar).

* I do the coating off the stove because there is a great tendency for the sugar to burn and you'll get bitter popcorn instead. Not nice.

* After coating, remove popcorn and fill pan with water and put on stove to boil. The residual sugar will melt into the water. This way you don't have to scape off the dried melted sugar. Pour away water, dry pan and repeat till you've finished coating all the popcorn.

*Estimated time of 1 packet: 20 minutes.

Share your popcorn. Tastes better that way =)