Strawberry Disappointment
The first ears of Strawberry popcorn in my garden are drying out. They look really exciting! The ears are small, but they are suppose to be. They have a nice rich red color.
The kernels are also small, even though this close-up makes them look big. The parts that were in the cob are white, and the outside parts are the red color. Getting them off the cob was quite fiddly and tedious work. The reason may be because they were still a little bit moist. Even though the seeds were hard enough not to be damaged as they were removed, they were still a little stuck.
I put about 50g into my hot air popper. They whirled around, made lots of noise — smelled fantastic! The smell was like hot buttered sweet corn!
But this is what came out! You can see they only popped a little bit, if at all. The next time I try, I will let them dry out a little more, but I wonder if that was really the problem.
Anyone have any suggestions?
The taste by the way, even half popped, was fantastic. No real need for extra butter or salt, the taste was rich enough all by itself.
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6 Responses to “Strawberry Disappointment”
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Hi Patrick. First, I’ve never grown popcorn, so I can only tell you what I’ve read. Apparently, popcorn needs to be REALLY dry to pop effectively–some people dry it for several months before popping it. I’m glad to hear that the taste is great. Someday this will grow in my garden!
That corn looks great!
it remind me of the colorful corn back at my country.
I hope you succeed on your next try
Good luck!
Patrick,
For the popcorn to pop properly it needs to be dried to about 12.5% moisture. In Canada, I work for a farmer who usually air dries his popcorn on the cob, but doesn’t pop it until January or February. Hope this is helpful.
Thanks for the comments everyone!
~fer: Your blog looks great! Good luck with your balcony garden.
Since reading these comments, I’ve come across this post which has some more information:
http://carletongarden.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-first-popcorn.html
First try wiping kernels with a little butter, olive oil or veg oil and then place whole cob in a paper bag. Pop 2 to 3 minutes until popping stops.
This works great for me. Kernels are small on the strawberry corn but I love the flavor.
Hi Cheryl,
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll give it a try.