Why YSK: Popcorn fans often want a buttery flavor, but plain butter is a bad choice for popping popcorn in a pot, because the proteins and sugars smoke and burn around the same temperature where it’s hot enough to pop the kernels.
Ghee, or Indian-style clarified butter, is butter that’s been simmered and the milk solids (proteins and sugars) skimmed off. This leaves a clear yellow oil that doesn’t smoke when it’s heated and doesn’t go rancid quickly, but has a distinct toasty butter flavor.
Vegetable oil is either flavorless or faintly bitter, and some high-temperature vegetable oils tend to start polymerizing (i.e. becoming plastic) when heated in small amounts. This is also not good for popcorn.
Good-quality popcorn popped in ghee reliably produces lots of “butterfly” popcorn with few unpopped “duds” and no scorched kernels or batches ruined by smoke.
Try it! I’m sure not going back to canola oil.
Don’t some companies sell “popcorn oil”? What is that made of?
Oil and artificial flavors. I’ve tried a lot of them and none of them have a “real” butter flavor. It’s more of a greasy feel than taste.
soybean oil, usually. and diacetyl can be added as a buttery flavoring.
fun fact: diacetyl inhaled in large enough doses can cause bronchitis. this was a problem in popcorn topping factories, hence the term “popcorn lung”