Spicy PepperJack Cheese Popcorn

A special thanks to Pop Secret for sponsoring today’s post. Recipe and opinions are my own.

I’m a sucker for good popcorn. Unlike the kids, I like popcorn all sorts of different ways. I can eat it plain, salted, covered in butter, or with multiple add-ins. The only kind of popcorn that I can’t stomach is burnt popcorn. Yuck. When I used to have a full-time day job, back pre-triplet, I would make a bag of popcorn for a snack on slow afternoons. But the microwaves at work were different than mine at home, and I would burn the popcorn EVERY TIME. It drove me crazy. The entire office could smell the burned popcorn and could usually trace it back to my work area. Of course, burned popcorn doesn’t work for the office OR for home movie nights. I’ve only burned popcorn once here at home, and my daughter let me know about it! The house smelled terrible and no one would eat my ruined movie night snack. As luck would have it, that was the last bag of popcorn in the pantry, too. I really could have used the Pop Secret Perfect Pop App during those occasions, and this Spicy Pepperjack Cheese Popcorn recipe would have spiced up my movie night, too!

 

Ingredients:

• 1 Bag of perfectly popped Pop Secret Butter popcorn
• 1/3 cup grated PepperJack Cheese
• 1/4 cup Crushed Red Pepper Flakes (or less to taste. These really add the spice.)
• Olive oil

 As I mentioned earlier, the popcorn can make or break family movie night! Whether you’re enjoying plain popcorn or spicing it up with add-ins, it all begins with a bag or perfect popcorn. Pop Secret has recently launched the Perfect Pop App that works with their Homestyle, Butter, Light Butter, Movie Theater Butter, Extra Butter, 94% Fat Free Butter, and 100 calorie variety bags. If you have an iPad or iPhone 5+ on iOS7, then you can download the app for free from the App Store!

To use the app, put a bag of Pop Secret in the microwave and enter suggested cooking time from the packaging. Note: Perfect Pop is optimized for the deliciousness of Pop Secret popcorn only. Turn up the volume on your iPhone or iPad. Point the phone’s speaker towards the microwave and keep within 3 feet. Start the microwave, and then start the app. You’ll see the app “working” along with the popcorn (see the popcorn “rising” in the below photo?), and it will tell you to stop the microwave when the popcorn is Perfect!

I was surprised to find that the Perfect Pop App told me to stop my popcorn a whole minute and a half before the microwave was actually finished. If I had let it cook the entire time, it would have been burned for sure!

From here, you could stop and have perfect popcorn for your family movie night. Or you could give this bag to the kids and make another for yourself to continue on with this Spicy Pepperjack Popcorn.

As soon as the popcorn is finished from the microwave, pour it into a large bowl. Drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil over the popcorn and stir it. The olive oil will help the add-ins “stick” to the popcorn. Add the Crushed Red Pepper and Pepperjack Cheese and stir again. The more grated the cheese, the better than it will “stick” in the popcorn. Ideally, it should be grated more finely than illustrated in my photo. It still worked well, but I’m a perfectionist when it comes to popcorn! 🙂 The Crushed Red Pepper Flakes give the popcorn a resounding kick, so use less if you desire popcorn that has less heat to it.

What’s your secret to perfect popcorn? Do you think that you will use the Pop Secret Perfect Pop App?