You Must Buffalo Your Popcorn

My partner and I are enthusiastic members of the Joe Bob Briggs mutant family . For the next month or so, we’ll be spending almost every Friday night watching Last Move and snacks. Popcorn is my favorite, even though my boyfriend and I have very different styles of making popcorn.

His favorite popcorn topping is a combination of powdered parmesan cheese and the fine sea salt his mother used to make for him when he was little. It’s pretty good, but I’m an oil bitch and can’t stand no fat. I’m also a much more adventurous popcorn lover (and more adventurous eater in general), always fiddling with compound oils and churning butter with various sauces to create new and exciting flavored fats.

My new favorite is buffalo popcorn, which sounds exactly like it: popcorn flavored with buffalo butter sauce. Buffalo sauce is a compound oil on its own, in a ratio of 1/3 cup butter to 1/2 cup Frank’s hot sauce. It’s perfect for topping hot wings, but a bit heavy for popcorn. To make popcorn sauce without soaking it, you need to change the recipe to add more fat.

How to make buffalo sauce suitable for popcorn

To make buffalo popcorn, I use a ratio of one part hot sauce to two parts butter. I like to use Frank’s since Frank’s tastes like buffalo wings, but you can certainly use any hot sauce you want. (If you want even drier popcorn, you can use Frank’s seasoning mix and ditch the oil entirely, but I don’t usually recommend ditching the oil.)

Pop the corn as usual and melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat once dissolved, then add 1 tablespoon of Frank’s. Season popcorn with sauce, drizzling buffalo oil on top and toss to distribute. Enjoy watching a good movie, preferably directed by Lucio Fulci.