Burnt Popcorn

The aroma of fresh popcorn will lighten the mood and give everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling like an 8 week old puppy. In the same way, a bag of scorched microwave popcorn is about as lovable as a rabid pit bull trained by Satan himself. The smell of burnt kernels will send a normally congenial office down the path of destruction as everyone prairie dogs out of their cubes in the hunt to lynch the infidel who dared to curse their space with the scent of perpetual ash.

This morning, with the yeast happily rising in the dormant oven, I remembered that we forgot to make bread the day before, and when you sort of count on that to make your lunch, you end up with the lunch that I was able to cobble together: a bag of Dorito's and microwave popcorn. If you know much about the history of the microwave oven, then you may well know that popcorn was one of the first food ever cooked in the new invention way back when Truman was in his first term and personal computers were science fiction. But after almost 70 years, popcorn remains one of those foods that is tricky to get right in the microwave, and even harder to get right in an oven where you've never cooked it.

So I put the popcorn in the microwave and set the time for 3 minutes (the happy zone for popcorn at home), but I stood right next to it the entire time waiting for that time when the kernels stop popping (no more than 5 seconds apart). It took a minute fifteen for it to take off and it went full tilt for another minute before it settled down.

I felt it in my gut. I thought it was time to take it out, but there was still 45 seconds left, and I kept hearing the occasional pop. At about 30 seconds remaining, I opened the door and smelled it. That light scent of overdone popcorn. Smoke was not billowing out or anything and the smell was not strong, but I knew I had waited too long. It no longer had that good smell, but at the same time, it wasn't overwhelmingly bad either. It was as if the two smells were canceling each other out.

I opened the bag and looked inside. Sure enough, quite a few of the popped kernels were browned on outside and black inside, but just as many of the others were white or yellow (you know, movie butter) and looked fine. I took the yin-yang mess back to my desk and poured a little into a bowl and started sorting as I ate the good stuff. In the end, only about a quarter was burned while the rest was fine, so I believe I dodged a bullet on office hate, and learned that it takes about 2:15 to cook popcorn in the microwave at the office. It'll probably be another five years before I do it again, but I'll totally keep that in mind.