Maple Kettle Corn

[PapaSmiff]

I tried to make some Maple Kettle Corn, but the syrup keeps burning. I'm wondering if anyone has any tips and tricks. Here's the recipe I used.

1/4 cup canola oil
1/3 cup popcorn seeds
Shake constantly
when the popcorn begins to pop, add:
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons maple syrup

I always end up with the maple syrup in a burned glob at the bottom of the pan, even though I shake it constantly.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can make this work? The stuff that didn't burn tasted great.

[softmaple]

try using maple sugar

[Toblerone]

It's not exactly kettle corn, but I make popcorn as usual, add butter and salt in the bowl, then toss with a little maple syrup. It's delicious.

[lpakiz]

I make kettle corn by preheating the oil til it smokes a bit or my wife hollers, then adding 1/3 cup seeds. We keep the seeds frozen til using. Just before you expect the first POP, add sugar (about 1 good tablespoon) and swirl around to dissolve it. I would like to substitute maple sugar for white sugar, but this stuff does turn out GOOD

[Dennis H.]

Well I tried making maple kettle corn.
The 1st batch didn't work so well.
I put about 1/4c of oil in the pan and heated that up. Dumped in 1/2 cup of popcorn into the smoking hot oil. Then dumped in 1/4 cup of maple sugar.
I continued to shake the pan until the popcorn was done popping.
Looked good but had nice burnt maple flavor! And it wasn't as sweet as I was hoping for.

So I tried again but with slightly different ingredients.

This time I used 1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup of popcorn kernals
3 good heaping tablespoons of maple sugar
3 good heaping tablespoons of white sugar
and added to taste, about 1 teaspoon

I heated up the oil till it just started to smoke
Added the popcorn and started to shake pan to keep kernals moving.
When the first few kernals started to pop I then added both white and maple sugar.
Keep shaking the pan. If you do not it will burn
Onc the last of the popcorn is popped dump into a large bowl or other container and sprinkle with salt and stir.

This till I found that it had a nice sweet maple taste.

Enjoy.

[Woody_Woodruff]

Not kettle corn, but this is good- pop two bags of microwave type. I dump it out on a cookie sheet and grab up the corn, leaving old maids behind, and set aside the good ones in a bowl, dump the rest in teh trash.

Boil 1/4 C syrup in the tallest narrowest sauce pan you have, bring it up to ??? (i cant get a thermoter in it without burning my hands, wish i had a probe digital)... but it will bubble up big time, turn dark... i let it go as far as i can, it's a visual thing i guess. I tip teh sauce pan over the fire to keep syrup deeper. dump in the corn and stir very well, keep spoon at the bottom and bring corn up or it'll get soggy. spread it out on the same cookie tray and bake at 250 for about an hour, move it arround every 15 mins, let set up for 10 mins and return it to same bowl. repeat as necassary

[themidnightsapper]

Wanted to see if anyone had came up with anything else here. I buy kettle corn from a husband and wife that set up near my house once or twice a month. This weekend we experimented with making kettle corn in their kettle. First time we put in a pint of syrup instead of the white sugar and the syrup burned. Second try we popped the corn and when it was nearly complete in the kettle, we poured a pint over the popped corn and stirred. The second try had a good taste, but not as good as the standard kettle corn. The biggest issue was the popped corn absorbed the syrup...we had hoped it would only coat it. The final product is denser and somewhat chewier than the standard kettle corn.

Any new ideas or experiences?

[upsmapleman]

I use a popper from gold medal that is made to do kettle corn. Started out mixing maple sugar with white, but with experience now just use plain maple. There is a learning curve just like making any other product. Once you get the hang of it you wonder why you had so much trouble. I think we have a 12 to 14 oz popper and will do 10 to 15 batches at a time.

[Super Sapper]

I was at a vendor fair this last weekend and let a Kettle Corn guy try some maple sugar. It did not have very much of a maple flavor and figured it would need more maple sugar but then would be too expensive to make.

[Dennis H.]

We've made our own maple kettle corn using one of those hand held poppers that you use over a campfire.
1st mixed 50:50 white sugar:maple sugar. had no problems with the making good kettle corn.
Then used straight maple sugar, this is where we found that trial and error is needed to find the right steps to make successful kettle corn.
We found that if you added the maple sugar too soon you would get a burnt taste in the final product. So we found that we would heat up the corn kernals and oil for a few minutes and try to judge the time so that we are just right before the corn starts to pop and then add the maple sugar. This way the maple sugar is in just long enough to sort of melt down so it coats the popcorn when it pops but is not in too long as to get a burnt taste.

Remember I am using a small hand held popper but do not see how this would not work the same with say a copper kettle.

Good luck.