Photo: Claire Lower
My partner and I are enthusiastic members of the Joe Bob Briggs Mutant Family. For the next month or so, we will be spending virtually every Friday evening watching The Last Drive-In and eating snacks. Popcorn is a favorite, though my boyfriend and I have very different popcorn dressing styles.
His popcorn topping of choice is a combination of powdered parmesan cheese and fine sea salt, which is how his mother made it for him when he was young. It’s pretty good, but I’m a butter bitch, and cannot abide the lack of fat. I also am a much more adventurous popcorn dresser (and more adventurous eater in general), always messing around with compound butters, and whisking various sauces into butter to create new and exciting flavored fats.
My new favorite is buffalo popcorn, which is exactly what it sounds like: popcorn flavored with buffalo sauce butter. Buffalo sauce is practically a compound butter on its own, with a ratio of 1/3 cup butter and 1/2 cup of Frank’s hot sauce. It’s perfect for dressing hot wings, but a little water-heavy for popcorn. To sauce your popcorn without sogging it out, you need to invert the recipe in favor of more fat.
How to make a buffalo sauce appropriate for popcorn
To make buffalo popcorn, I use ratio of one part hot sauce to two parts butter. I like using Frank’s, as Frank’s is the flavor of buffalo wings, but you are certainly welcome to use any hot sauce you desire. (If you want an even drier popcorn, you can use Frank’s seasoning blend and forgo the butter entirely, but forgoing butter is not something I’m in the habit of recommending.)
Pop your corn as usual, and melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Remove from the heat once melted, then whisk in 1 tablespoon of Frank’s. Sauce your popcorn by drizzling the Buffalo butter on top and tossing to distribute. Enjoy while watching a fine film, preferably something directed by Lucio Fulci.
