About a month ago, I was watching an older movie (from the late 1980s) and saw one of the characters making Jiffy Pop popcorn on their stove. Almost immediately, I found myself wanting to pick up a pan of it and make it for myself.
I didn’t even know if they still made Jiffy Pop but was pleased to find it for $1 per tin. However, after making it and eating it, I have a hard time believing the product is going to be around much longer.
The biggest problem with Jiffy Pop popcorn is it is relying on a concept that doesn’t really exist too much any more. In the past, it was a great product because everyone made their popcorn on the stove or in a popcorn maker and having the popcorn come in its own little pan that could be thrown away afterwards was a great idea.
But, in today’s world of microwavable popcorn, Jiffy Pop really doesn’t stand a chance.
For one, the popcorn takes forever to make. I will be fair and say I was trying to make the Jiffy Pop on an electric stove; something the packaging doesn’t recommend. So, I understand that might have made the cooking process longer than it should have been.
Still, there is a big difference between putting a bag of popcorn in the microwave and pushing a button and standing over a hot burner with the Jiffy Pop. First of all, the little handle you are supposed to be holding is very hard to get a good grip on and pretty much requires you to have you hand right over top the cooking surface. I had to wear an oven glove just to hold it or I would have lost some of the hair on my knuckles.
Then there’s the whole “hold and shake the pan in a circular motion while cooking” thing. It’s one thing if you were doing that for a minute or two. But, when you have to do that for several minutes, your arm does get a bit tired. In fact, I had to switch hands a couple times during the cooking process.
All of this might have been worth it if the Jiffy Pop popcorn exceeded the standards set by your top microwavable brands. Unfortunately, it didn’t even come close.
For one, there really wasn’t a lot of popcorn inside the pan; at least not as much as you would get from a microwavable bag. I would say about 25 percent of the kernels went un-popped and, of the ones that did pop, about one-third of those were burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan.
The popcorn itself tasted a bit stale and, considering it was supposed to have been buttered popcorn, was very dry. We had to melt our own butter for it.
I had craved Jiffy Pop before but now realize it really is nothing more than a fad that refuses to just die out. If you own a microwave, you have no reason to even bother buying this product.
