Free at last! Free at last… Not the historic pronouncement of Martin Luther King at the 1963 March on Washington. But almost as monumental: Science and beer making have come together to produce a new popcorn that doesn’t need butter or other flavouring…
Tony Studer, in his lab, with sample ears of his Blue and Orange corn…
It used to be, you had to add butter and salt to get the most out of your popcorn. Or suffer it bland and dry. But we now have a third choice. Yes, fellow popcorn lovers! There’s a new strain of popcorn that provides its own nutty, umami-rich flavouring. And it’s coming to a store near you… Relatively soon.
The straight-up low-down…
The new wonder corn is called Illini, after its developers at the University of Illinois. Working with local Urbana-Champaign brewery Riggs Beer Company, the plant breeding specialists cross-bred existing varieties over and over again, over 8 years, to arrive at the perfect popcorn.
Why a brewery?
Simple: the plant scientists at U of I had worked with Riggs before, developing improved grains for their craft beers. And the project also provided a real-life challenge for the students team leader Dr Anthony Studer was supervising. Their original goal was to create a popcorn that was naturally coloured orange and blue – the school’s colours. (See photo, left.) But the emphasis gradually changed, to producing a sup-erior popcorn.
What they came up with
“Popcorn is fun and difficult at the same time,” Studer explained. The challenge was to produce ‘a good flake’, the industry name for the butterfly-like shape the kernel pops into. That shape helps produce improved mouthfeel and texture. “You don’t want it to taste like you’re biting into a packing peanut where the starch sticks to your teeth.”
The team also succeeded, as well, in breeding related popcorn varieties in the schools blue and orange colours, part and parcel of attaining their main objective.
A long and popping road
According to Food & Wine, Studer had to teat-pop more than 1,500 samples to arrive at the hybrid that was eventually named Illini SuperPop. The final version is described as having a pronounced corn flavor and a subtle nuttiness.
“This is so good you could eat it without butter or salt and the flavor qualities would still come through,” says Studer. “I hope that when people taste it that they really see the natural flavours you can achieve with popcorn.”
My take
I don’t know if folks will actually eat Illini Super Pop ‘plain’, as Studer enthuses. But it will certainly require much less salt and ‘lubrication’ to make it a truly joyful thing.
For now, the stuff is only available locally, in the Urbana-Champaign region. But Studer is working on lining up a national distributor. Meanwhile, he’s also working with growers to produce his new breed.
All things being equal… You should be able to buy Illini Super-Pop at your local supermarket within 2 or 3 years…
~ Maggie J.