Healthy-ish popcorn toppings?

[FusionChefGeoff]

Much excitement at casa Fusion today as we did proper popcorn in a pan for Film Friday. But the toppings (Parmesan and cinnamon - not together ) weren't very successful.

What could I do apart from salt, butter or icing sugar???

Mix them together and make caramel? Then there's only a little bit of each one!

Iced I smothered my bowl in salted butter (!) but want to avoid added salt for DC plus am trying to find a sugar free snack repertoire so I'm scratching my head about what might work

What about something like paprika?

What I'd do is sift through the cupboards, find every likely candidate you can for flavouring it, like different ground spices, divide the popcorn into lots of little portions, and have an experimenting/tasting session? Should be fun, if nothing else, and a batch of popcorn is cheap enough that it doesn't matter if most of it is inedible.

Also, it's good that it's pan-cooked rather than air-popped, as to be frank you need some oil on there for the flavourings to stick to.

I always popped my popcorn in ghee instead of veg oil; gets a nice buttery taste without having to add extra butter.

Also, if you can find ghee without added ethyl butyrate, it tastes better. The butyrate makes it taste weird, at least to me. Some brands don't have it.

I make my own ghee…

I used to do a savoury popcorn that was widely requested, wonder where the recipe went......

I was coming on to suggest salt & smoked paprika

The problem is, savoury popcorn always tastes better with salt in the seasoning mix.

Iced I smothered my bowl in salted butter (!) but want to avoid added salt for DC plus am trying to find a sugar free snack repertoire so I'm scratching my head about what might work

How do you pan fry your popcorn? When i was a kid this was a thing but I'm so used to microwave popcorn I've lost the knack.

Cinnamon

Vanilla sugar
Choc shot syrup

www.onceuponachef.com/2013/04/nigella-lawsons-party-popcorn.html

Think it was this one. Still salt and sugar though.

You said that about the butter, Fusion sounds revolting … I was just mentioning the ghee as it gets you a nice buttery taste without having to add any additional fat and makes it taste quite nice without any toppings at all, and unfortunately the savoury flavourings do taste better with salt! But there've been quite a few suggestions without salt you could try. I'd mention nutritional yeast, but it's quite salty. If you do want to add any salt, powdered goes further.

Incidentally, what's the problem with salt and/or sugar? I'm assuming the popcorn is an occasional treat. I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong, just interested to know!

To the extent you're popping the corn in oil, why don't you try infusing rosemary into the oil before popping? I've never tried it myself but I saw a Giada de Laurentiis recipe for it years ago and thought it sounded intriguing.

My late beloved father was no cook, but he taught me how to make popcorn - butter wasn't necessary so long as it was popped in a saucepan in oil. Just a liberal sprinkling of salt on the hot corn and that was all you needed. Bliss! When DH is away on business trips I sometimes feed DCs "proper" food for dinner and make myself a saucepan of popcorn for my dinner while I catch up on TV or reading.

Salt and smoked paprika sounds delicious. Going to try that!

Iced I am not completely against the salt / sugar angle but if I make something myself, I do try to use it as a chance to reduce / remove it so I don't feel too bad about when I don't have that choice / option.

That's fair enough! It's tricky, so much premade stuff has unnecessary quantities of the stuff.

I was looking for ideas a while ago and found this www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/articles/50-flavored-popcorn-recipes.html

Cheers CDTaylor - that's amazing! Should keep me going for a while!

Cajun seasoning? We always have some in the cupboard for homemade wedges, so I imagine it'd work well on popcorn too.