Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Popping pleasure
Imade popcorn the other day. It was very exciting – mainly because I hadn’t picked up a packet in the supermarket, I’d grown it myself.
I’m not quite sure why I’m so excited about it. Maybe, in the same way dark evenings brings out the dog’s inner wolf, growing my own snacks as opposed to staple grocery items like my usual fruit and veges brings out some mad inner child that wants to dance around shouting, ‘‘wahoo, I made my own popcorn from scratch, how cool is that!’’
Actually, that inner child tends to be pretty near the surface, because when I made the first batch of popcorn I might have been seen to be behaving as above.
I was given the popcorn seeds by a friend. I planted them in spring, alongside my usual corn. Corn and popcorn will cross pollinate. From the information I’ve found on the subject, this will happen if you plant the plants alongside one another or in separate parts of the garden; the trick seems to be to plant them at different times, so they are being pollinated at different times. I planted my sweet corn about two weeks prior to my popcorn. That seemed to work; my sweet corn cobs were fat and juicy, whereas the popcorn cobs are thinner, with finer kernels.
The popcorn tassels are a pretty purple – quite different to the pale cream tassels of my sweet corn. Popcorn is left on the plant longer than sweet corn. You harvest when the kernels are dry and hard – but before you start getting autumn rain or you’ll quickly get mildew, I discovered.
Popcorn pops because each kernel has a small amount of moisture contained in soft starch inside the hard outer kernel – this moisture turns to steam when the kernels are heated sufficiently and the resulting pressure causes the kernel to burst open, or pop. For this to happen, you have to have the right amount of moisture – approximately 14 per cent. From my research, I gathered that my popcorn, while it felt quite dry, would have a bit more moisture than that when I harvested it. Initially I hung the ears of popcorn under the eaves on the veranda to dry but the weather was damp and some ears started to get mildew. In the end, I stripped them all back to the cob and put the cobs on a shelf above my in-wall oven.
I don’t have a scientific way of measuring moisture content so I figured I’d just experiment. I tried a couple of times to pop kernels in the microwave, but with little success. In hindsight, that could be because I’ve never really popped corn in the microwave so I may not have left it long enough. I was feeling a bit discouraged though and the cobs above the oven were in danger of becoming decorative dust collectors when the other half prompted me one night with a request for popcorn.
I decided to try it on the stove, the same way I made popcorn as a teenager. First I had to flick the kernels off a cob, which was easier than I expected it to be. Next, I heated a small amount of oil in a pot, added the kernels and put the lid on. Nothing happened for what seemed ages. Just as I’d lifted the lid for a peek and called out to the other half that my experiment might be a failure, the kernels started exploding. The dogs were fascinated by the strange noises and cleaned up the few pieces that had flown to the floor before I crammed the lid back on. The end result was a pot full of beautiful fluffy popcorn.
We’ve had popcorn several times since with no failures yet. The kernels have been easy to flick off some cobs and harder on others, but all have popped successfully. The job always generates much canine interest. The dogs have been quick to learn the noises that precede the funny white fluffy stuff appearing and to their joy, it seems to be a food type that sometimes ends up on the floor as I’ve got a bad habit of checking the pot just as the corn starts popping.
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