Bliss in a Bowl

Corn, or at least industrially produced corn, has been getting lots of bad press lately and rightly so. Michael Pollan dissed it in “Omnivores Dilemma”. The documentaries “King Corn” and “Food, Inc.” pointed out that we humans are starting to be composed of corn; it’s so predominant in our diet.
It’s fed to feedlot cattle, much to the detriment of the cows and the nutritional value of the beef. It’s made into high fructose corn syrup (which has recently been linked to the obesity epidemic) and about 50 other ingredients that are found in packaged food.
It’s been genetically modified to withstand massive amounts of pesticides without much research into the ramification of those changes. The pesticides and herbicides needed to grow mass amounts of the stuff are poisoning ground water in Iowa and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. The huge swaths of monoculture corn farms cause erosion of farmland. Best of all, we taxpayers help fund all of this with subsidies to the giant corporate corn growers. It deserves to be vilified.
But not all corn is industrially produced and not all corn should be avoided. After all, it was responsible for sustaining Mesoamerica for millennium; it can’t be all bad. In its natural state (i.e. not high fructose corn syrup) it is a whole grain, high in fiber and low in fat, sodium and sugar. Fresh corn on the cob is one of the greatest pleasures the summer has to offer.
But the kind of corn that gives me the most pleasure all year long is popcorn. In fact, these articles might never get written without popcorn (I’ve got a bowl full of the hot tender nuggets on my lap right now, and yes it does tend to make the keyboard messy). There’s something about popcorn that helps me think and write clearly.
Of course, all that thinking got me wondering about the popcorn itself. I knew that popcorn is a special variety of corn but that’s about all. How long has it been around? What’s the physics behind the transformation from hard, tooth-breaking seed to fluffy goodness? And what other fascinating things about popcorn could I find in my research? I had to find out.
It turns out that popcorn might have been the first variety of corn developed in Mexico, or at least the first method of cooking it. Corn, or maize as it’s known in most of the world, was domesticated about 10,000 years ago from a grass. There may be no other crop that humans have changed more in their domestication. It’s hard to reconcile a fat ear of corn with a grass, but a grass it is.
Ears of popped corn have been found in archeological sites and I can only imagine the surprise on the first person’s face when the “garbage” she threw into the fire started exploding. Maybe at first she thought the gods were angry but I’m sure she changed her mind after she tasted it.
Of the five general kinds of corn, three of them will explode when heated. Dent and flint corn will form a crisp puff but come nowhere close to the expansiveness of popcorn. What makes popcorn do its thing is the composition of the hull (yes, the bits that get caught in your teeth and gums). The popcorn hull conducts heat much faster than other types of corn while at the same time being quite a bit stronger. When you cook popcorn, the heat is quickly transferred to the inside of the kernel (the endosperm). The starch and proteins in the endosperm rapidly reach the boiling point. They soften and give off moisture that turns to steam. All that steam builds up pressure against the hull until it reaches seven times the external pressure and then, POP, the kernel explodes and all that soften endosperm expands with the loss of pressure. The endosperm quickly cools and solidifies into white crunchy goodness.
If you suddenly have an urge for some, please feel free to stop reading for a moment and go make yourself a bowl. Pretend like its intermission at the theater.
Popcorn is a bit picky about the conditions under which it will pop to perfection (and there is some controversy about what constitutes a perfectly popped kernel but I’ll get to that in a moment). The kernels should be heated to right around 380 F. Anything cooler and the moisture inside the kernel that forms the steam that causes it to pop will evaporate before it gets hot enough. The kernel won’t pop and you’ll end up with “old maids” (a technical but slightly offensive term for completely unpopped kernels). Anything hotter and the starch and protein closest to the hull will get too hot and rupture the hull too soon, causing incomplete popping. The result is those barely opened kernels at the bottom of the bowl that my dentist would call teeth breakers and I consider a delicacy (maybe we should call them old geezers just to even the score).
Moisture content is just as important as temperature. Too dry and you’ll end up with all old maids. Too moist and the corn will pop but not very much and will be really chewy. To insure your popcorn stays at the right moisture content (14%), keep it in an airtight container in a cool dark place but not the refrigerator. If you do happen to come across a batch of kernels that have dried out and won’t pop, you can actually reconstitute them by adding a few drops of water to the jar and waiting a few days to see if they pop. If not, add a few more drops and repeat until they do.
Do you have any of that popcorn left that you made at intermission? If you don’t go make another batch, I’ll wait. If you do, take a look at the popped kernels, called flakes in the popcorn industry. There are two general shapes the flakes take. One is more rounded with most of the hull intact on the bottom. The other has lots of wings and the hull is spread out over all the wings in little pieces. There are probably combinations of the two shapes as well. Now bite into one of the round pieces, called mushroom flakes and then into one with wings, called butterfly flakes. The butterflies are noticeably more tender while the mushrooms are chewier.
Here’s where the controversy over what is a perfectly popped kernel of corn comes in. The mushrooms are much sturdier kernels and can hold up to packaging and forming into other confections like caramel corn but they are a bit tougher. The butterflies are fragile but take up more volume and have a better mouth feel. While the popcorn industry is trying hard to decide which is best and breeding popcorn to yield one or the other, I’ve decided I like them both (actually, until I wrote this article, I never noticed a difference).
Now I need some floss.

Vicki Reich lives and pops popcorn in Sagle. She eats at least one bowl of stove popped corn for each article she writes for the Reader. She had to have two for this one. She can be contacted at wordomouth@yahoo.com

Sarah’s Popcorn

My friend Sarah makes the best popcorn. I’ve never been able to reproduce it but here’s what she told me she does.

Olive Oil
Popcorn
Tamari
Brewer’s Yeast

In an old, heavy bottomed 4 quart pot used exclusively for making popcorn with a loose fitting lid (or if you don’t have one of those at least a heavy bottomed pot with a loose fitting lid) pour in some olive oil. Use approximately 1/3 cup oil for 1 cup popcorn. Turn heat to medium high. Place 4-5 kernels in the oil and close the lid. When those kernels pop, add the rest of the corn, put the top back on and gently shake the pot. When those kernels begin to pop, start shaking the pot again and keep shaking until the popping slows to one or two every 10 seconds. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Sprinkle with tamari and brewers yeast to taste. Dive in.