This Mom-Hack for Making Caramel Popcorn is a Must-Try

The scent of freshly popped popcorn is one of the best smells out there, but the stuff that comes in the bag just doesn’t cut it when it comes to taste. Since it’s super quick and easy to make it yourself, you can go beyond just plain butter. Add to that a yummy ingredient like caramel and it makes for a salty and sweet treat. Home-made popcorn can be made a few different ways and depends on the recipe and the manner of cooking, but creative cooks Kyle and Mistie Knight shared a video from their Facebook page for a pretty perfect one-pan caramel popcorn recipe. It’s made with a few secret and not-so secret (caramel candies of course) ingredients  -one of them being, a raw egg, still in its shell.

Ummmm OK, but hey, with 158,000 followers, the Knights must know what they are doing right? 

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Kristie starts off with the egg as the centerpiece in the pan, followed by two sticks of butter (someone is a Paula Deen fan, as she later states that the minimum amount of butter sticks you want is two). As the butter melts, she adds in a bag of Werther’s caramel candies, about as many as your grandmother has at the bottom of her purse.

The candy melts with the butter to make a nice, velvety caramel sauce, and she adds in the corn kernels, eyeballing the amount, and a bit of salt. More mixing, more waiting for the corn to pop, more wondering what this egg is doing and why it’s in there in the first place.

“I saw this online,” Kristie states, in reference to the egg. “It really works!”

The corn pops and gets nicely coated in the caramel sauce. When Kristie is ready to put those popped corns in the bowl, she taps the egg with a whisk and breaks it, releasing some yolk. She doesn’t mix it, she just removes it. Why she didn’t use a slotted spoon or otherwise, no one knows. What we do know is some of that snack has a bit of egg on it, and we want to know how it tastes.

The actual caramel corn looks great, and apparently tastes delicious too. But…the egg…why?

While Kyle and Mistie don’t reveal the reason for the egg, some of the other viewers called them out on their egg-cellent joke – sort of like the video-version of clickbait. “They always do something [like this],” says viewer Luanne Austin. “Like WD-40 in fridge. Laundry detergent, it’s just for a laugh and make you notice.”

“I finally tried this recipe. It turned out pretty good!! But instead of the egg🥚 I substituted it with a bar of soap. 🧼🍿👌🏼” says Kim Green-Simmons in the comments.

Kim even got a response from the Knights – “Very clever!!!!”

Popcorn at home is not hard to make. Even if you want to add candy or sauces, it doesn’t require an egg. Still, some say the egg keeps the kernels from sticking together, while others say it’s to keep wannabe chefs from adding too many kernels to the pan. 

We’ll let you be the judge on this one, and if you’re looking for a real reason to add egg to your popcorn, try this recipe for salted egg yolk popcorn from Greedy Girl Gourmet.