DIY microwave popcorn

We love popcorn. In fact, we're downright crazy about it here.

I grew up with an air popper, and have fond memories of watching fluffy popcorn burst out into the bowl.

Today I live in a little tiny house with a little tiny kitchen, and we don't have room for superfluous kitchen appliances, so the air popper had to go. For years now we've been popping our corn on the stove in a big pot, but today I was in the mood for experimentation.

I remembered reading a tidbit in a Cook's Illustrated magazine a while back about popping bulk popcorn in the microwave, and figured it was worth a shot.

I dumped a handful of popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag...

... put another bag over the first, like so...

(pardon the sideways shot, I'm trying to blog and nurse a baby at the same time)

...then I put it in the microwave for about 4 minutes, aaaaaaand:

The results were awesome. Mind-blowingly awesome

Seriously, judging by my sister's reaction, you'd have thought I'd turned those kernels into white doves or something. All afternoon, she kept shaking her head and saying, "I just can't believe you did that!", and "It's really that easy-- Ha!"

Some things I learned from my little experiment:

Oil isn't necessary to microwave pop. In fact, the lack of it seems to keep the popcorn from burning. Some of those kernals were in the microwave for more than 6 minutes, and none them were the least bit scorched.

However, Oil might aid the cooking. I ended up with more "old maids" than I'm used to, and when cooked this way, the kernels took longer to pop than they do with standard store-bought microwave popcorn.

Bags can be reused many times. And, although I haven't tried it yet, I imagine this would work just as well with a bowl and some loosely-applied plastic wrap (or other covering).