Today I took my kitchen road trip to a Midwestern county fair with Martha’s Caramel Corn from page 275.
Caramel corn is one of those things we’re very used to getting in a plastic bag. The original and most popular is Cracker Jack, which is so much a part of Americana it’s been immortalized in the stadium classic, Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Cracker Jack also delights children with their little prizes enclosed with each package. Fans of the movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s might remember the inscribed Cracker Jack ring that Paul gives to Holly as a symbol of his love for her. So, you might ask, why would I go through all the trouble of making my own caramel corn when there are both iconic and even not-so-iconic brands out there that I can buy cheaply? The simple answer is, like so many other things, homemade just tastes better!
This is easy to make, although it does involve working with hot sugar which always has an element of danger. Here’s a tip for how to stay safe when you’re cooking up a bubbling volcano of molten hot sugar: be careful! I know, that’s pretty cheap advice, so let me be a bit more specific. With many things we worry about waste so we try to get the last drop out of the pot as we pour it but with hot sugar just let it go. It’s going to be sticky and therefore a little will be wasted at the bottom of the pan, but when your pushing to get those last drops out there’s a good chance you’ll use too much force which will cause some to fly out and hit you. Remember, with hot sugar it only takes a tiny drop to cause a huge amount of pain! Another thing to be mindful of is the spoon when you’re stirring it, because if you don’t place it in and take it out very cautiously drops can splatter up at you. Again I need to stress that just a drop on your skin can cause a serious burn. I’m not saying this to scare anyone out of working on things like homemade caramel. Quite the contrary, I think it’s great to take risks in the kitchen and expand our horizons in all sorts of ways. But I also think that if someone had given me the advice I’m giving you here I’d have saved myself some pretty nasty second degree burns I’ve taken over the years! If shampoo makers feel compelled to tell us that we shouldn’t stick their product in our eyes no matter how disturbing that Patton Oswalt sex scene was, I think professional cooks should warn us not to play around with hot sugar in a careless way.
Martha’s caramel corn recipe is a salty sweet delicious treat that’s good nostalgic fun. Parents might want to put it in a bag for their kids and place a little gift surprise at the bottom for them just to make it even more special.
