You Should Sauce Popcorn, Yes You Should
Seasoning popcorn with dry seasoning is easy – just shake it up. But there are many fragrances that live outside of this realm. These flavors come in the form of sauces, and some of them work well for popcorn too.
But sprinkling, dripping, or otherwise pouring liquid flavoring directly onto a large bowl of fresh and fluffy popcorn turns it into a large bowl of uneven-flavored raw popcorn, which is not what you want. To evenly and effectively distribute your chosen cheeky flavor, you first need to beat it with butter.
By emulsifying the sauce with butter (or vegan butter substitute ), you can distribute it throughout the bowl without inadvertently creating soggy stains. We’ve used this technique before for making soy sauce butter and fish sauce butter , but it works with just about any sauce or liquid flavoring. Hot sauce is a good sauce – there are so many hot sauces to try! – but my new favorite is maple syrup, which reads like sweet-salty, low effort (no tea grain texture, obviously).
To season the popcorn, melt two tablespoons of butter or butter substitute in a small skillet over medium to low heat, or cut and microwave in portions of 5 seconds, stirring occasionally, until completely melted. Add a teaspoon of your sauce to the butter and beat with a fork. (You can zoom in if necessary, depending on how much popcorn you are making.) Try dipping a piece of popcorn into your mixture and add more sauce if necessary, be sure to beat with each addition to form a smooth mixture with butter. Drizzle and stir on the popcorn to coat, then decide which sauce and butter combination you want to try next. I highly recommend the aforementioned fish sauce, soy sauce, maple syrup, and hot sauce, but pounce on your seasoning stock and get creative. You can also combine sauces – maple hot sauce with butter sounds pretty sophisticated in my less humble opinion.