A couple weeks ago my husband brought back some caramel bacon popcorn from Seattle and it was good. So good in fact that I wanted to recreate it. I’ve always been one of those people that likes a sweet and salty food combination. For example. one of my favorite things to eat is a honey baked ham with fruit chutney. I can eat that alone for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Seriously, I’m not even exaggerating, I will eat leftover ham for every meal until there’s none left. But I digress, back to the popcorn recipe. I’m really pleased with how the popcorn came out. It’s not as good as the popcorn from Seattle, but it’s close. Recipe below.
Caramel Bacon Popcorn
8 slices of bacon – if you really want the bacon flavor to be strong, perhaps 10 slices
1/2 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
Cook bacon as normal till crisp. Chop up fine (refer to picture above). Set aside.
Making popcorn: If you’ve never tried making it on the stove, it’s very easy to do. Add a couple of tablespoons of oil in a large pot on medium heat. Add one kernel, cover pot with lid. When you hear that kernel pop, add one third cup of kernels, place lid back on. Shake pot while kernels cook. When the popping starts to die down, turn off heat. Continue to shake the pot and keep the lid on for about 30 seconds. Repeat process. Spread popcorn out on two baking sheets lined with tinfoil. If you don’t want to use tinfoil, I recommend spraying the baking sheets with oil first.
Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
In a medium sized pot melt butter. Add brown sugar, corn syrup, salt and mix together. Bring to a boil and stir constantly. Boil for four minutes without mixing. Turn off heat and add baking soda, vanilla, and bacon. Mix all together.
Drizzle mixture all over popcorn and mix well. Work quickly before the mixture hardens too much. Don’t worry if the popcorn isn’t completely covered with mixture. You’ll be able to fix this when it’s in the oven.
Place both baking sheets with popcorn in oven. Bake for one hour stirring every 15 minutes. Watch the caramel to make sure it doesn’t get too dark, it burns quickly. Take out of oven an let cool. Done. You may find that it doesn’t need to be in the oven for a full hour.
Source: zakkalife.blogspot.com (defunct blog)