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From: reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: Microwave Popcorn
Message-ID: <2458@glacier.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 15-Dec-85 17:52:06 EST
Article-I.D.: glacier.2458
Posted: Sun Dec 15 17:52:06 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Dec-85 04:01:33 EST
References: <2457@glacier.ARPA>
Reply-To: reid@glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Distribution: net
Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab
Lines: 38
Summary: 


The secret to cooking popcorn, whether in a microwave or anywhere else, is
to maximize the rate of flow of heat into the popcorn. When you cook in hot
oil, you have about 1200 watts of energy being conducted into the corn by a
relatively efficient conductor of heat (the oil). When you cook in a
microwave, you have (typically) 650 to 900 watts of energy being transmitted
to the corn in a poor impedance match.

When you heat popcorn too slowly, the steam forms slowly and leaks out of
each kernel rather than exploding it.

The trick is to make sure that there is as little heat as possible lost to the
surrounding environs, by insulating the bag from the floor of the microwave
oven. When you buy Pillsbury Microwave popcorn they give you a special bag
for heating the popcorn in, and they give you a little cardboard gadget to
put underneath the popcorn. The thing that is special about the special bag
is that is has a plastic liner, which traps moisture, which causes the air
inside the bag to become extremely hot, which in turn reduces the amount
that the corn kernels get cooled by conduction as they cook. The thing that
is special about the little cardboard gadget is that it is an insulator,
which prevents heat loss out of the botton of the bag into the liner of the
microwave oven.

The first thing you should do is to insulate your cooking bag from the floor
of the microwave oven. I recommend using several layers of corrugated
cardboard box, cut to a nice 9 inch square and taped together into a
nonmetallic insulating pad.

The second thing you should do is to find a cooking bag that has a
polyethylene vapor barrier. Common sources of such bags:
 * airline airsickness bags (they are a little small)
 * Pillsbury microwave popcorn bags (open them carefully and re-use them)
 * Peet's coffee bags (Peet's is an SF mailorder coffee company)
Of course your first 5 batches will smell like French Roast, but them's the
breaks.
-- 
	Brian Reid	decwrl!glacier!reid
	Stanford	reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA