How to Make Popcorn for Lazy Beginners Like Me -- With the Help of a Popcorn Popper

If you have eaten your share of popcorn, I wager you will agree that the best popcorn is homemade popcorn. Once, movie theater popcorn was the best. Thanks to the cutting of corners by some number cruncher -- I imagine -- the days of movie theaters putting out the tastiest popcorn are long gone. So, it's homemade popcorn for me.

And I prefer it from a popcorn popper.

But who will make it?

I'm too lazy.

I've looked all over the house, and it seems my wife is not here. Perhaps, I'll have to stay off my lazy bum a few more minutes and make my own popcorn.

How to do it without too much effort? I've got a few ideas.

The Laziest Way to Make Your Own Popcorn

Of course, there is no lazier method of popcorn making than grabbing a bag of microwave popcorn and throwing it in a microwave -- pop, pop, pop -- and soon enough, you'll be back on the couch munching. I suppose you could consider a microwave a popcorn popper.

That is the laziest way, but is it the tastiest?

It seems the next laziest way still includes a microwave. Check it out...

• Assuming you own a microwave popcorn popper
• (If you don't own one, the Presto Power Pop is highly rated on Amazon)
• Find your microwave popcorn popper (and I hope nobody "hid" it from you).
• Throw in the amount of popcorn that befits your popper and your hunger.
• Include cooking oil if desired. (Microwave poppers can work with or without oil.)
• Pop it in the microwave for a couple minutes. (Microwave cooking times vary.)
• Don't start watching TV or anything, because...
• within a couple minutes, popcorn!

This method still meets the needs of we lazy folks.

• If you have a hot air popper like the one in the photo to the right from Presto, bust that baby out.
• Put in your popcorn.
• Plug that thing in for some electricity.
• Press start and Presto! ;)
• You have popcorn.

(Again, I hope you did not go watch TV, because you'll have popcorn very fast, which always only enhances TV viewing.)

On those rare days when people like us can muster three or four minutes of effort and attention span, I submit we get the best popcorn from the Whirley Pop popcorn popper.

These great kitchen appliances have been around for about three decades, and most people who love popcorn know about them, but if the Whirley Pop is new to you, all I can say is, "Get thee to a kitchen-ary (or whatever you call a place that sells kitchen supplies)!" and get thee one of these amazing, simple machines.

In the simplest terms, here's how we lazy peeps make popcorn with a Whirley Pop:

• Make sure you have an oven mitt handy (pun -- not a funny one, though).
• Pour one to two tablespoons of cooking oil into your Whirley Pop.
• Pour in your popcorn.
• Put your oven mitt onto the hand opposite the one you favor for cranking.
  
• Turn the crank that makes this magic machine go "whirley".
• Soon, you will hear a "pop", and then another.
• The "pop-pops" will build into a loud wave, and then...
• you guessed it!  Popcorn!