if you’ve ever seen how butter was melted for popcorn back in the day, you might be less alarmed. Butter was placed in a heated hopper device with a slowly spinning paddle. By the end of the day what you ended up with was rancid butter that might make you pretty sick. What you ended up with by the end of the week was an indescribable horror. Minimum wage suburban teenagers aren’t the most reliable when it comes to cleaning and getting a butter hopper clean is a lot of work.
3 Likes
I find mine on the black market…
Picture of the butter aisle at my local supermarket, last week. It is no joke!
6 Likes
We were lucky to have had two dedicated assistant managers. They checked the pot after cleanup/audit every night to make sure it was clean.
2 Likes
Super weird… what is it about those butter shortages? I remember there was a butter shortage in Norway about two years ago…
(Actually, the astonishing thing is that modern food production and logistics provides us with an abundance of all kinds of food all year round.)
3 Likes
I only got about maybe a third of the way through the comments before I felt the need to get up and pop a batch in coconut oil. Nom nom. 
2 Likes
Well butter is one of those things that should be available year round. Once a cow starts milking. It will give milk regularly regardless of season (though traditionally you’d get less and lower quality in the winter). And butter itself is kind of a food preservation thing. Old school cultured butter gets a little fermented by beneficial acid producing bacteria, and then removing so much of the water and protein by churning it, and salting it, gives it a hell of a shelf life. Even just out on the counter.
I think these butter shortages are an artifact of the modern food system. Basically a logistical issue. Since you don’t have a cow providing your butter locally its more of issue of getting all the massive amounts of butter in Europe to you. Same deal the occasional bacon or chicken wing shortages that have hit the US.
Less that there’s no butter. And more that a short term regional dip in supply causes people to straight up hoard butter. Which drives up prices and leads to empty shelves.
2 Likes
Ah just re-reading some of these and something occurred to me. From what I understand you don’t neccisarly raise the smoke point of an oil by mixing in a higher heat oil. Its not as if if you combine clarified butter (ghee, smoke point ~450f/230C, which is actually a hell of a lot higher than i thought, puts it near the top!) and safflower oil (~510f/264c) will get you a smoke point some where in between. Its more you end up at or somewhere near the lower smoke point. Because the oils are just mixed, they don’t react or change. Its why regular butter will just burn when mixed with higher heat oil. The proteins are still in there, waiting to burn. And they do so at the same temp. Seems the same deal with oils.
But there are other benefits. Just anecdotally it seems to me hot oil is less viscous than melted butter so its spreads in the pan better and thus distributes heat to things like popcorn better. Sometimes you want the flavor of the oil in there, like olive oil. And oil is usually a lot cheaper than butter so its a good way to get butter flavor without “wasting” all that expensive butter. So I end up mixing butter and oil a lot. I like the idea with popcorn, should work well. Evenly distributing high heat is the big thing with getting the stuff to pop right. And safflower oil to cut your ghee should work gang busters.
Also I’m generally obsessed with safflower oil lately. I had been using avocado oil to season pans and sear steaks because of the high smoke point. But that shit is pricey. Like more expensive than good olive oil by a lot. Safflower oil has functionally the same smoke point. But its cheap. Like one of the cheapest oils at my local stores cheap. Its my new favorite cooking oil. I may be frying a turkey for ganksgiving. Think I’m gonna see if the local restaurant depot has jugs of safflower, I like the deep frying results better than the peanut oil that’s usually recommended. And safflower in smaller volumes seems to a be a bit cheaper.
1 Like
And not just for itself:
2 Likes
Every kernel pops within less than a minute. It’s amazing.
2 Likes
& @gero @Ryuthrowsstuff we get butter shortages in Japan too but it’s more due to import restrictions which can’t be bypassed at times of low domestic milk production.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
