Popcorn Storage

My biggest pet peeve about popcorn is the quantity that you have to make.  From Jiffy Pop to Microwave popcorn you always have plenty for you and some friends, but what if you just want a snack for yourself?  Sure you could always make it in a pot (note, that's how I make it most of the time from Allison's secret recipe), but that's a lot of work for a small bowl of popcorn.  The only solution to all of these problems is storage, but nobody like stale popcorn.  So after a fun night with a few friends, who didn't eat their full share of popcorn, I decided to do a little experiment.  I put a small amount of popcorn in three containers.  Then I put one container in the freezer, one in the refrigerator and one, I just left sitting out.

I then let each container sit in their respective spots for about 3 days.  After those three days I sampled them all together to find out if any of the storage methods worked better than another.

There was a difference between each of these samples of popcorn.  The one that was just sitting out was by far the least crunchy, and the pieces with putter on them were particularly soggy.  The flavour was OK, but the texture was most certainly off.

The sample from the refrigeration was significantly more crunchy than the one that was just sitting out.  The buttery pieces also had much more crunch and were more similar to the non-buttered ones than that of the sitting out sample.

The frozen popcorn was fairly similar to the one from the refrigerator, although it might have been a little more crunchy.  Most surprising was how quickly it defrosted, or how little difference there is between the texture of cold popcorn and frozen popcorn.

I guess if I have to give you any storage advice I'd say keep your popcorn in the refrigerator, and if you don't have the room the freezer works too.  In all cases I did use sealed containers and I think that's just a good idea as well.  I would say that butter does affect the lifespan of old popcorn, however I can't imagine eating popcorn without butter and I'm way too lazy to melt more butter every time I want to open one of my stored batches of popcorn.

CC