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

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.