Low Fat Homemade Microwave Popcorn

I love popcorn and I make my own low fat homemade microwave popcorn. Not only is it healthier, but also you don’t have to worry about the PTFE (Teflon) on the inside of the store bought bags. This recipe is actually NO Fat if you don’t use butter spray and flavor shakers on your end product. I find plain popcorn a little dry.

To make your OWN homemade microwave popcorn you need:

Popcorn kernels

Brown lunch bag

Stapler with staples OR needle and thread.

Open the bag and cover the bottom of the bag with the popcorn.

Don’t do two layers, but you can pack it in there pretty well. I prefer the cheapest popcorn as it makes smaller sized popped popcorn. That’s me, you decide for yourself by looking at the size of the popcorn when you buy it.

Now there are two ways to keep the bag together. Most people say one or two staples work without sparking their microwave, but mine did, so I prefer to fold over the bag twice, and using a large darning needle, just do a quick stitch to hold it together. You can also just give it three small folds over, and put it in like that. (I have also heard of using a large plastic paper clip, masking or butchers tape, but I would not recommend these)

Place the bag in the microwave on its side, and put the oven on for 3 minutes. This should be about as long your microwave takes to cook store bought pre-bagged popcorn. Stop the popcorn when the popcorn pops once per second.

Open up the bag and spray some butter flavored spray in, and then sprinkle in some popcorn flavor shakers. The spray makes the flavor shaker stay on the popcorn…my favorite is White Chedder. Another suggestion is a spritz with one of those salad flavor spritzers.

A few more ideas about Low Fat Homemade Microwave Popcorn

If your popcorn is dry, try a spritz of water in the bag before you pop it.

You can use the same bag over and over if you don’t use oil.

In the bottom of the store bought bags, there is a special plastic conduit that channels the heat evenly to the kernels. The next time you pop store bought popcorn, remember to cut out this channel and use it in the homemade bag. This can be used over and over again.

For the taste of kettle corn, sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar into the bag before popping. Sugar does not have any fat.

So how did this come about? Well, in the quest for low fat good tasting popcorn, I have gone through 5 poppers in the last 3 months!  I bought a great one from Wal-Mart, but the switch went after a month. I decided to get another type from Sears, but after 2 days the switch went on that one too. I returned it for another one, but the popcorn seemed to get stuck in the new popper’s little holes and started to smoke! 

I took that back and went to the Bay and bought one of the Movie Type Popcorn Poppers that have a bowl on top. The idea is that you turn it over and you have a bowl for your popcorn built in.  But when I got it home, I realized that it needed oil. A lot of oil. That went back too.

I went to Superstore and picked up one from them. It died before 40 corns were popped.

I decided to go back to Wal-Mart. I bought another popper and kept the receipt. I returned it just the other day for a new one. Then I tried the paper bag method and it really does work.