Sometimes, you get a recipe from the newspaper and bleh. Other times, you get a recipe from the newspaper and it's like Christmas when you eat it. This recipe is one of the latter. My mom and I discovered this when I was living with her while Mike was gone. There is a shop in Tyler that makes gourmet popcorn. The food section (which comes out when there's a full moon) of the paper did an article on them and they shared one of their recipes. Kind of cool of them right? :) (my mom got some of this popcorn at work, and she said ours was better than the ones made by the people who invented the recipe... my mom doesn't lie so I'm going to believe her)
I love caramel. I love sea salt. I love popcorn. It's all here! This recipe is great and so easy. I will give you a heads up though, it takes about an hour of 10 minute interval baking. Totally worth it. You'll see. YOU'LL SEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!
Sea Salt Caramel Popcorn
8 cups popped popcorn, without butter or salt (we figured out this is half a cup unpopped kernels)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp sea salt, divided in half
1/2 tsp baking soda
Preheat oven to 200. Put brown sugar, butter, corn syrup, and 1/2 tsp of salt into a 2 quart sauce pan, no smaller. Bring to a full boil, stirring occasionally, and boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Mixture may bubble. Working quickly and carefully, pour caramel over popcorn and stir well. Spoon mixture onto a large ungreased sheet pan and sprinkle evenly with remaining 1/2 tsp salt. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 10 minutes to break up kernels. Allow to cool (10 to 15 minutes) and serve
*What's a recipe on here without my special side notes? :) First of all, I know I've said a million times before that caramel needs to be made in a pot with a heavy bottom. Still true, but this is a very low maintenance caramel, so it can be made in a regular old pot. Also, they say to stir occasionally, I can't stir caramel occasionally. I feel that it needs to be stirred constantly to turn out right. Also again, when you stir the popcorn, while it's baking, my mom and I use a spatula. It's not so much stirring as it is flipping chunks of it around and breaking them up.
Lastly, when mixing the caramel into the popcorn, initially, some of the naked popcorn may fall out onto the floor. It helps if you have a furry sous chef to eat those pieces for you.
Here's some naked popcorn that's about to be delicious!!!
This is what all of the caramel stuff with look like before...
...and while it's cooking! Ooooooh caramel.
And FINISHED! It's pretty much gonna look like this before it's baked. The baking just really crisps it all up and sets in the caramel. So easy y'all. So yummy. Go make some for someone you love.