As I've said before, I love popcorn. But I don't usually like strongly-flavored popcorns. Cheese popcorn, in particular, I'll always give a miss. Except when it's in The Mix.
I'm sure it's not unique to here, but I first encountered The Mix as a Chicago thing. We have a number popular popcorn chains here, Garrett's and Clark's Nuts come to mind, and they all have The Mix—half caramel popcorn, half cheese popcorn. There's something about the combo that takes it to a warm, fatty, sweet, crunchy new level.
My brother was visiting a week ago and came home from a day out touristing around with a big bag of Garrett's Mix. But, tragically, whoever had filled the bag had not done a very good job and it was at least 3/4 cheese, with all the caramel at the top. We ate as much mixed as we could, but then were left with a half-bag of just cheese popcorn, which my brother left behind when he went back to Texas. I was about to throw it away when Erica asked if I'd make some Cayenne-Caramel Popcorn. Not only would I, but I'd Fix the Mix!
Our Cayenne-Caramel Popcorn recipe is from Smitten Kitchen (Erica tells me she has a cookbook coming out soon—looking forward to it). It's pretty much just standard caramel popcorn with a 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper added, and it's very fast to make. But the pepper really takes the flavor up a level and it's proven to be a holiday dessert party favorite. And, I mean, Erica and I can eat an entire batch in no time flat.
So, I whipped up a batch of C-C Popcorn and took a portion out to mix with the left over cheese popcorn. The only downside to my homemade caramel popcorn is that I don't achieve the smooth coverage of individual poppedcorns that you see in Garrett's popcorn (they use big tumblers to coat their corn—I use two spatulas frantically racing the cooling caramel). So I had to smash up the chunks a bit.
Verdict—Success! Spicy and cheese is a great combination, if pepper jack has taught us nothing else, and so the sweet, spicy, cheesy mix is best of three worlds. I don't know if it's worth going out of my way to buy cheese popcorn to make this mix, but it's great to keep in the back of my head for all those times (?) I end up with a random bag of leftover Garrett's.
Our Cayenne-Caramel Popcorn recipe is from Smitten Kitchen (Erica tells me she has a cookbook coming out soon—looking forward to it). It's pretty much just standard caramel popcorn with a 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper added, and it's very fast to make. But the pepper really takes the flavor up a level and it's proven to be a holiday dessert party favorite. And, I mean, Erica and I can eat an entire batch in no time flat.
So, I whipped up a batch of C-C Popcorn and took a portion out to mix with the left over cheese popcorn. The only downside to my homemade caramel popcorn is that I don't achieve the smooth coverage of individual poppedcorns that you see in Garrett's popcorn (they use big tumblers to coat their corn—I use two spatulas frantically racing the cooling caramel). So I had to smash up the chunks a bit.
Verdict—Success! Spicy and cheese is a great combination, if pepper jack has taught us nothing else, and so the sweet, spicy, cheesy mix is best of three worlds. I don't know if it's worth going out of my way to buy cheese popcorn to make this mix, but it's great to keep in the back of my head for all those times (?) I end up with a random bag of leftover Garrett's.
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