The Search for a Tasty Butter-Flavored Shelf-Stable Substitute

[tuftears]

As many of you know, my workplace like many companies offers snacks to its employees in its break rooms, which happens to include pre-made popcorn in small bags. I liked these, until the quality went off. I suspect popcorn that got warehoused too long and became stale. So I decided that I needed to start making my own popcorn at the office, so I could have it fresh when I liked.

I'm not a fan of microwave popcorn-- you might have heard about some health hazards associated with them. But I did find that it's possible to make regular popcorn in a microwave, with something like this Nordic Ware popping bowl.

There's one catch-- by itself popcorn is dry and flavorless. I needed butter and salt.

Salt... Easy enough. The problem is that I didn't have a good cool place to store butter long-term; while the workplace coolers have spaces for employees to keep stuff cold, that's only for temporary use. So I needed a shelf-stable butter substitute.

I tried Butter Buds... But the flakes wouldn't stick to the popcorn.

I tried keeping margarine in the coolers... They got thrown out over a holiday weekend.

I tried red palm oil on my popcorn... It did indeed make the popcorn satisfactorily orange, just like the artificially flavored movie theater popcorn-- mm, memories! But it didn't smell or taste right.

Well, I'm here to inform you that I've finally found a workable shelf-stable butter substitute. It's a butter-flavored olive oil. I just tried some and dang, it does taste like butter! It's a Christmas miracle!

I actually managed to snag the 750ml bottle for $10 plus $4 shipping, but they've corrected that little data error and it's now significantly pricier. Ah well. I'm sure I'll be ordering another bottle sometimes.

Comments

[octantis.livejournal.com]

Or you could just use butter. It's not so very deadly. :|

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

The problem is keeping it around! I mentioned that the refrigerator at work gets cleared out periodically, right? If I bring butter, it'll vanish sooner or later, and I'd need to store it in a reasonable container as well, which would also vanish.

[octantis.livejournal.com]

That's weird. But you don't have to bring a whole tub either. Little block of butter.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll see how the olive oil does at work first. ;) I can always invest in a butter dish with a nice permanent label for my name and 'Don't throw this away, dangit' later.

[anher.livejournal.com]

Or Ghee, which is healthier than butter, and is still butter... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I've never actually tried ghee. It's supposed to be shelf-stable, though!

[anher.livejournal.com]

It is. We use it at home for things and we like it.

[kfops.livejournal.com]

What some of my vegan friends do is use brewer's yeast as a substitute for butter. At first it seemed a bit odd to the taste, but after a few handfuls I found that I had trouble stopping!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Is that the same stuff as nutritional yeast?

[kfops.livejournal.com]

I had to check, but according to this article brewer's yeast and nutritional yeast are two different things.

I've only had the brewer's yeast version myself.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well, I may try that sometimes!