Popcorn Trials

Jim and Judith got us this old fashioned popcorn maker for Christmas. It's a smaller version of what they use in movie theatres. It's counter-top size; although a little too large for our counter. I thought it was kind of a cool thing and have been a little anxious to try it out. I came up with the idea of inviting some friends over on Saturday night for a movie and popcorn evening. Karen thought we should give this thing a test drive before we had to use it for real so last night we did a trial run with it.

In general the machine did an okay job. It's got a gear that extends down from the top of the machine and meshes with a gear that extends up from the top of the popcorn drum. That gear turns a stirring wire inside the popcorn drum. In the first run we did the motor kept getting bogged down and stopping. We were using vegetable oil and some "gourmet" popcorn that Karen had. My thought is that something in that combo didn't move around as easily as it should have and blocked the stirring arm from turning. It wasn't working well at all and I was fast moving into this-is-a-piece-of-junk mode.

For the second run we used stuff from a little kit that Karen had. It had real popcorn oil (butter flavored!) and normal popcorn kernels with some butter flavoring mixed in. This trial ran much better. The motor only got bogged down once at the very end of the cycle when the drum was full of popcorn. Plus the popcorn was much tastier. I'm certain that was because of the pre-added flavoring but it still tasted better coming out of the machine.

In general the machine redeemed itself as being able to pop decent popcorn if the right materials are used a little care taken. Now we're ready for Saturday night's party.