Movie Morsels: How Popcorn is Made

Hi All! I’d like to welcome you to a new segment that I’ve been working on, called Movie Morsels. These articles will be a little bit of an inside look to the behind the scenes action going on at the movie theatre. If there’s anything you’d like to see here, please feel free to use my contact form to ask. I’m going to be adding a Movie Morsels category there, so I know that’s what you’ll be asking if you choose to. For this first column, I’m going to take a look at how everyone’s favorite movie treat is made!

Making popcorn is actually a pretty simple process. No, it’s not quite as easy as taking a bag of your favorite brand of popcorn and sticking it in the microwave (though that’s pretty easy). You do start out with the same corn though! LARGE bags… 35 pound bags of the stuff. That’s pretty heavy.

The first thing you have to do is heat up your kettle. When the kettle is nice and hot, you take a few pre-measured containers (32 oz) of corn, and pour that into the kettle. Then, you quickly add some popping oil, and salt seasoning. The oil of choice for movie theatres, in case you were wondering, is coconut oil. After a few minutes, the familiar sound of popping corn starts to fill the room. When the kettle begins to fill, the freshly popped corn falls into a heated holding area. How do you know it’s done? The same way you would at home, listen for the popping to get far and few between!

From there, the corn is run over a panel that has holes in it. This is to prevent all those small pieces and unpopped kernels from making it into your bag. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? The popcorn is then put into large bags, or directly into popcorn warmers where it is then scooped for your pleasure! It only gets better when you top it with buttery topping (No, it’s not real butter anymore)!

Making popcorn at a theatre can be fun, but cleaning the kettle when all’s said and done can be a major pain. But, it’s all in a day’s work at a movie theatre, where we strive to have the hot, fresh popcorn that all our guests love!

There are some very interesting facts about popping corn that even I didn’t know about… I found this information from Cretors, one of the leading brands of popcorn kettles for movie theatres!

• Popping with oil was patented in 1893.
• Industrial Kettles pop 40 pounds of corn per hour.
• The more your popcorn expands, the higher quality it is considered!

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Movie Morsels. As I mentioned before, feel free to use my contact form to submit an idea for an article, or perhaps an article yourself! I’ll be happy to review and post anything that is appropriate!