After having popcorn, the taste of food reached another level

Rice candy is a type of popcorn made from glutinous rice. It is usually fried in pork and sand, and then mixed with sugar syrup, nuts, and other ingredients to shape and cut into pieces or into balls. Glutinous rice flowers have a long history in China and may have been made as early as the Northern Song Dynasty.

Eating staple foods in various ways is our racial skill. Even if some miscellaneous grains are not particularly delicious, we have never eaten them less since childhood, and popcorn is one of the contributors.

For Chinese people, popcorn is a snack in the era of scarcity and an important way to open up the surplus of household cereals, but this is far from the whole ability of popcorn. Popcorn has become a pure form of leisure and entertainment today.

How did popcorn become popular nearly a hundred years ago

The United States is the largest popcorn consumer in the world, with an annual consumption of 43 liters of popcorn per capita.

The popularity of popcorn has always been inseparable from its low price. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when ordinary people were frugal and frugal, popcorn, which cost 5 to 10 cents per pack, became a favorite among consumers. While all industries were hit hard, popcorn sales stood out during the Great Depression.

The Great Depression hit the entertainment industry, and cinemas were deserted. They had to rely on lowering ticket prices to attract audiences. At this time, cinemas found that buying tickets was not profitable, but they could make a lot of money from snacks such as drinks and popcorn. Since then, popcorn sales have become a standard feature in cinemas, and even many high-end cinemas have put aside their image and started to operate this highly profitable food for the poor. This business still exists today and is summarized as the popcorn economy phenomenon. In 2010, the box office in North America was approximately $11 billion, with popcorn selling for over $1 billion.

For the audience, popcorn is a relaxing way of life, and eating it means being free and easy, letting go of constraints. Sharing popcorn has become the embodiment of the closest relationship, so it has become an indispensable soulmate for entertainment industries such as movies and sports. The simple and joyful meaning contained in popcorn itself is also used to refer to brainless works: popcorn movies.

The origin and shape of popcorn

Popcorn has gone global with Hollywood movies, but the origin of popcorn is an indescribable topic.

Popcorn has a long history. In 2012, scientists discovered popcorn and corn cob residues dating back approximately 3000 to 6700 years near the north coast of Peru, proving that popcorn was once the main food source for human ancestors living in this area. In the Americas, the indigenous people initially made popcorn by stir frying or simmering it in hot sand.

Popcorn can be roughly divided into butterfly shaped and spherical shapes in appearance, completely bursting like a blooming flower, and this shape is called butterfly shaped. If the seed coat cracks evenly, it will produce spherical popcorn, also known as “mushroom shaped” popcorn. Although its expansion rate is not as large as butterfly shaped popcorn, it is easy to transport and store, and can be more evenly coated with sugar or other seasonings, so it is often used to process into popcorn snacks. Therefore, there are more and more spherical popcorn nowadays.

The two types of popcorn are also caused by the use of different varieties of corn. The new variety of popcorn that can generally produce spherical popcorn did not appear until 1998. It can be said that the principle of frying popcorn is ancient and unchanged, and the current level of technology is reflected in the technology of corn seeds.

Compared with coarse grain rice and stick Congee, popcorn brings the taste of coarse grain to another level

From a nutritional perspective, puffed foods also make coarse grains taste suitable and easy to digest. The starch in the raw material is quickly gelatinized during the expansion process. Gelatinization refers to the swelling and splitting of starch under high temperature and water to form a uniform paste. The gelatinized starch is more palatable in terms of viscosity, strength, toughness, etc. At the same time, because gelatinized starch is more easily hydrolyzed by amylase, it is more conducive to digestion and absorption by the human body.

From the perspective of the food itself, popcorn is low in calories and rich in dietary fiber, making it a healthy food