Smoky Bacon Popcorn. Salty and smoky popcorn with pieces of crispy bacon mixed in makes the perfect snack. Bacon + Popcorn. What’s not to love?
Well we’ve come to the end of popcorn week! I hope that you’ve been enticed to bust out a pan and start popping the old fashioned way.
Popcorn week recipes include:
- Dutch Oven Popcorn, a tutorial for making basic popcorn in the Dutch oven
- Salted Caramel Pecan Popcorn
- Dill Pickle Popcorn
- Dutch Oven Kettle Corn
Dutch Oven Kettle Corn
And today we’re having our final recipe for this year’s popcorn week, Smoky Bacon Popcorn. This popcorn recipe is a little different than the others because it’s not popped in oil, we’ll use bacon grease! Using bacon grease to pop the popcorn infuses every single kernel with real bacon flavor.
I don’t know about you, but I always save my bacon grease to use later.
1) It’s kind of like a free bonus. Buy one bacon, get one bacon grease free.
2) It adds a ton of flavor to foods.
The other seasonings we will be using for our bacon popcorn are seasoned salt, smoked paprika, and black pepper.
For the bacon in this recipe you can either use freshly crumbled bacon or store bought bacon bits. Use whatever you have on hand. Just remember that if you mix in big chunks of bacon, they will all sink to the bottom of the bowl!
Please note: This recipe is written in mind for a person who already has bacon grease on hand. If you don’t, you’ll need to fry your bacon first to get the bacon grease to cook the popcorn. Because of the huge variations in thickness and fat to meat ratio in different brands of bacon, I can’t recommend a certain amount of slices to produce enough grease for this recipe. That said, 1/2 pound should be sufficient!
Smoky Bacon Popcorn
Salty and smoky popcorn with pieces of crispy bacon mixed in makes the perfect snack. Bacon + Popcorn. What’s not to love?
Ingredients
- 3-4 Tablespoons bacon grease*
- 1/2 cup popcorn kernels
- 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 3 Tablespoons bacon bits
- or
- 3 slices fresh crumbled bacon
- Melted butter to taste
Instructions
- Add 3-4 Tablespoons bacon grease* to your Dutch oven along with 3-4 popcorn kernels. Cover with the lid and heat over medium heat for about 2 minutes or until you hear the kernels pop. *(See Note 1)
- When you hear the test kernels pop, you'll know the bacon grease is the right temperature for cooking the popcorn. Add the popcorn to the pan and cover with the lid.
- Cook over medium heat for approximately 2-3 minutes, shaking the pan about every 30-60 seconds to help keep the popcorn from burning. When the pops begin to slow, remove from the heat but leave the lid on for 15-20 seconds because there can be some late bloomers that can pop up and burn you if you're not careful.
- Move the popcorn to a large bowl using a large slotted spoon so you can easily sort out the unpopped kernels.
- Season with the salt, smoked paprika and black pepper, stirring to evenly distribute. Drizzle with butter if desired.
- Sprinkle with bacon bits or fresh crumbled bacon and enjoy! * (See Note 2
Notes
1. Different brands and varieties of bacon will render differing amounts of bacon grease, making it impossible to recommend cooking a certain amount of slices of bacon to render enough grease for this recipe. That said, 1/2 pound of bacon should be sufficient.
2. Because this is cooked in bacon grease and contains cooked bacon, this popcorn is best eaten the day that it is made. It will go stale faster than regular popcorn.
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