Back in 1893, Charles D. Cretors introduced the first commercial steam-driven popcorn machine at the Chicago World’s Fair. Hewing to an original commercial recipes that featured clarified butter, lard and salt, these machines were the first to be able to produce a consistently popped popcorn.
We’ve updated the recipe only slightly, adding the now-ubiquitous pumpkin spices adorning everything from bagels to potato chips to lip gloss.
Melt 2 TBSP butter in a smal dish in the microwave.
Pour butter over popcorn and spice mixture. Stir to coat.
Heat a heavy pan (cast iron is best) over high heat. You should have a heavy lid to match the pan.
When the pain is HOT (drip a drop of water on the pan; it should sizzle and evaporate immediately), add 1 TBSP of butter to the pan and allow it to melt.
Pour the butter-spice-popcorn mixture into the pan and cover immediately with the lid.
Shake the pan over high heat, keeping it continuously moving. You want the kernels to be rolling around in the pan; if they are still for too long, the popcorn will burn.
You'll hear the kernels begin to sizzle in the pan, and then they'll start to pop. Keep shaking that pan back and forth! All of the kernels should pop within 20-30 seconds, a minute at most.
As soon as there are 1-2 seconds between pops, remove the pan from the heat and remove the lid (careful, there'll be a lot of steam).
Pour into a large bowl, sprinkle with salt to taste, and serve immediately!
Recipe Notes
Substitute 1 packet of Pumpkin Spice fatCoffee mix for all of the ingredients except the popcorn. This works best if you are using an air popper or one of these silicone microwave poppers instead of a the stove method (the powdered milk in the fatCoffee will tend to burn on the stove.) Follow the directions provided by your air popper for adding butter and flavorings.
It is hardly fair that Fall should come and we should miss out on Chex Mix. Not the pre-made stuff you find on store shelves, with chocolate-y sauces and sugar coatings and who knows what else. No, home-made stuff is what I’m talking about. Half of the experience is the smell as it cooks, and the fact that you can eat it steaming hot right out of the oven.
And let’s be clear, this grainless, chex-less chex mix has a very functional purpose: to keep you from gorging yourself on the Chex-FULL chex mix that will be circulating during the colder months.
Until the good folks at General Mills start to offer Pork Cracklings Chex, this will be a fairly good approximation.
Add almonds, pecans, and pepitas to a large mixing bowl
Take the plantain chips and crush them a bit. You just want to break them up into smaller pieces so that they mix better with the nuts and seeds. Put them in the bowl with the nuts and seeds.
Sauce
Melt butter in the microwave; 30 seconds on high will do.
Into the mixing bowl with the plantain chips, nuts and seeds, drizzle the sauce all over. Gently mix throughly.
Mix until the sauce is spread evenly over the other ingredients. In standard Chex-mix, there's a lot more butter; we use a lot less here because the chips, nuts and seeds won't absorb it. But as a result, you need to spend a bit more time mixing things up here.
Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Check to see if things have begun to brown. If not, bake for another 5 minutes.
Remove from oven and let cool. Serve as soon as you can get them into your mouth without burning yourself. Devour, preferably in groups, but it's also ok if you want to split this up into several bowls and devour separately.
Recipe Notes
For several reasons, this isn't totally paleo. Most Worcester sauce will have some soy sauce and/or sugar in it, and the seasoned salt we used (Lowry's, of course), has some corn starch in it. Also, it's likely that your store-bought plantain chips were fried, and probably in sunflower or canola oil.
If you want to make this more (if not perfectly) paleo, you can roast your own plantain chips in the oven; use 1 tsp himalayan pink salt, 1/4 tsp paprika, and 1/4 tsp pepper in place of the seasoned salt; and use coconut aminos or anchovy paste instead of the Worcester sauce.
