This one’s dedicated to my new favorite snack – brought up in 180 Kitchen, recipe #83. This time, Aurora and I have gotten crazy and added a little nutritional yeast to our coconutty favorite. Aurora, by the way, is the popcorn princess. She makes it the best. Her recipe. Not mine.
I must say, there is no finer use for coconut oil. Say what you will about butter on popcorn, but a light, expeller-pressed coconut oil shatters my best friend butter. It defies reason I know, but try it sometime, especially if you’re seeking out the metabolic advantages of coconut oil but have failed to find a way to consume it that doesn’t make you gag.
In the following recipe, I:
1) Place a jar of coconut oil into hot water to liquefy it.
2) Cook about a half cup of Steinke’s heirloom popcorn (awesome) in an air popper.
3) Pour lots of coconut oil (5-6 Tablespoons), 2T nutritional yeast (optional), and some sea salt over the popcorn and mix it all up a bit.
That’s about all there is to it. Does anyone really not have time to do this at home? Makes a great post-dinner snack. Get’s that ol’ tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier where happy serotonin gets made and transformed into melatonin for a long, dreamy night’s rest.
Enjoy.
Click on the pictures below to enlarge.
180 Kitchen 
doesn’t the popcorn get mushy by putting that much oil on so little popcorn? whenever i put a lot of butter on it gets really mushy. i guess some people like it that way, though. 🙂 you mentioned putting nutritional yeast on it. do you believe that is a good thing to consume on a regular basis and is it a good source of B-vitamins? i tried taking it as a supplement for a while during my pregnancy and it seemed to give me diarrhea. maybe you have to work up to it.
on a side note, i have been feeling shaky internally every night for a week or so after dinner regardless of what i eat. it’s like i feel when i am really cold, but i am not cold and i can’t seem to control it. i try to eat protein, carbs and lots of fats together, but i don’t know what this is. sometimes if i eat a snack at night before bed i get it too. like tonight i had a clementine and a glass of cream and right now i am totally shaking, but not visibly, if that makes sense. do you know what’s going on?
thanks, amanda
Butter contains liquid. It is not purely fat. All the more reason to use coconut oil. Oil doesn’t make popcorn soggy. Water content does. Nutritional yeast is very nutritious. I just like the taste. It’s like cheese.
I had a clementine last night also (10 actually). Your grocery store must have the same promotion going on as mine.
I don’t know what the shaking is all about, but if it concerns you, it concerns me. Take a break from the diet for a few days. Eat something totally different. Maybe go on a popcorn or clementine bender!
well now i can vouch for the palmer popcorn! we have had it 3 days in a row now and the stuff is fabulous!
also, i must say i appreciate 180kitchen so much b/c our thanksgiving meal was spectacular thanks to this book. i made flourless gravy for the first time ever and it was amazing! i don’t think everyone else felt the same way being used to the watered down low fat version with flour. this was loaded with cream, butter, homemade chicken stock and thanks to Whole Foods to supply me with demi-glace–i doused my plate of food with it and enjoyed every last bit! unfortunately, the cayenne pepper addition in your sweet potato gratin was a bit too much for everyone. i kept telling them to cover them with gravy, but they wouldn’t listen. they just complained. man, i wish i could eat like that every day. i can tell my digestion is not up to par, though, as evidenced by the intense sleepiness right after and middle of the night heartburn that had me sleeping half sitting up for the rest of the night. but i guess if i really push my digestion as you suggest i can overcome that, right? hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too!
Thanks Amanda. Glad you liked your gravy. Some cayenne is spicier than others. You may have the spicy kind! There’s 2 ways to look at digestive troubles like last night’s. You can believe that you ate too much, that eating too much is bad, and try to never eat a large complicated meal like that again. The other way is to say, “man, my digestion got a good workout last night!” and take pride in building that strength. I really have been taking the latter attitude, and its been really therapeutic – and fun!
Hi Amanda
Cream is high in lactose,(sugar) and the clementine is sweet too, (sugar) and I know many of us are addicted to high carbs. Didn’t Matt write a blog about addiction? I would dine on high quality protein and fats,(like animal protein, from grass feed beef)not beans and tofu and make sure you are getting all the other important vitamins and a equal amounts of calcium and magnesium.
Cream has lactose, but it’s certainly not “high” in lactose. Many fruits are too sweet for those who are highly sensitive to sweet tastes. The trick, and the better solution that we tend to seek, is finding a way to overcome the negative reaction to clementines for example, not just label them as “too sweet” and shy away from them.
No one’s recommending a diet of beans and tofu.
Dining on high quality proteins drastically increases calcium extretion. The real problem is the phophorous to calcium ratio that is most significantly altered by refined sugars, as an inapproptiate ratio between those two disenables calcium to be used properly.
My husband loves popcorn….but I don’t think we have a working hot air popper anymore….just a whirly blade type.
Do you have a cracker recipe…can I modify chapatis to make a crispy flavorful cracker to use with cheese? I haven’t found one in your cookbook yet. I was thinking of using my pasta maker to do the rolling out.
Lucy
Lucy,
Chapati makes great crackers if you cook it until crunchy. A rolling pin works just fine, rolled out to the same thickness as you would for a soft chapati.
I decided to make cheese crisps with a little butter, rosemary,garlic,and a little fresh ground ww flour…hope they come out okay.
I like making plain cheese crackers, also known as “frico.” See 180 Kitchen #141
Hi Matt
I like a lot of your ideas and practices and I too love VCO however I have been maintaining a low carb, lots of good proteins and fats for 20 months now and have had significant improvements in my health. No cravings, fabulous sleep, stronger, more endurance. I am also staying away from grains because of their high carbs and gluten and corn, (isn’t that where high frutose corn syrup is from?) Your thoughts?
I also had health improvements on low-carb, but then they started to undo themselves over time. I refer to the initial improvement in health on low-carb as the “low carb honeymoon period.” Low-carb can be a great transition diet for many people looking for stability, overcoming addiction, and so on, but it usually does not end with a happy ending.
Corn is a great starch. High fructose corn syrup is made by changing the structure of the molecule to manufacture fructose. Fructose is not found in corn in high abundance.
Eat low-carb all you like, but do not fear carbs. At some point, you may need them. Don’t be stubborn if symptoms such as bad body odor, poor digestion, or moodiness starts to set in.
I’ve just been looking for the benefits of nutritional yeast and found this: http://www.daystarbotanicals.com/nutritionalyeast.html. Now I don’t know what to believe.
Your thoughts on this, please, and thank you.
Meighen
I know that yeast contains free glutamate, but I personally haven’t feared it that much. I also don’t use it in excess. I consume it, on average, once per week. That is a different story than consuming food with MSG and/or aspartame at every meal, which is a reality for many people. The Japanese use as much free glutamate as anyone – it’s even naturally occurring in some seaweeds. They are the inventors of Aspartame and MSG (ajinomoto corporation).
It’s a debatable topic no doubt. A little nutritional yeast once or twice a week is not something to panic about. Are the risks worth the rewards? Maybe, maybe not. I leave it up to you. There are plenty of B-vitamin rich substances out there.
Matt:
Got here from you Tweet.
The deal is that you should not put butter on popcorn, only _clarified_ butter, to get the milk solids out, but mainly the moisture. So, pop it in c-oil – absolutely – but finish it in hot ghee.
Just an occasional “cheat” for me, but that’s how I do it and it’s far better than anything at the movies.
I hear you man. My popcorn is bomb. I don’t know why it’s so good with coconut oil, but it really is. Nothing against butter. I eat that with everything else. But on popcorn, I don’t know. Love that coconut oil. Amen to the butter having to be clarified. If it ain’t it’s a sog-fest.
We pop on the stove in lots of expeller pressed coconut oil. Does this have the same benefits?
Sounds like a damn fine idea to me!