This caramel corn recipe is simple to prepare and tastes superior to the stuff you’d find at a fair.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 45 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr |
| Servings: | 8 |
| Yield: | 4 quarts |
Ingredients
- Mazola Pure® Cooking Spray
- 4 quarts popped popcorn
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ cup Karo® Light OR Dark Corn Syrup
- ½ cup butter OR margarine
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon Spice Islands® Pure Vanilla Extract
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Spray a large shallow roasting pan with cooking spray, then fill with popcorn.
- Place in the preheated oven while preparing caramel.
- Mix brown sugar, corn syrup, butter, and salt together in a heavy 2-quart saucepan over medium heat; stir constantly until mixture comes to a boil.
- Stop stirring, and boil mixture for 5 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and stir in baking soda and vanilla until well combined.
- Pour syrup over warmed popcorn and stir until evenly coated.
- Return to the oven and bake for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Remove from the oven and spread onto a large foil sheet greased with cooking spray.
- Cool, then break apart and store in a tightly covered container.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 395 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 52 g |
| Cholesterol | 31 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 17 g |
| Saturated Fat | 9 g |
| Sodium | 567 mg |
| Sugars | 32 g |
| Fat | 21 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This was wonderful and just like you can buy at a store.
We love it. We added peanuts. If I double the recipe will I use the same boiling times for caramel or do I have to double the time?
The only thing I changed was I put peanuts in it. I turned the oven up a little more around 300 and left it in another 15 minutes and the caramel was harder which I like the real crunchy not the mushy. Turned out very good!
great recipe!!! tip: pick the unpopped kernels all out before mixing with caramel!!
Delicious. I highly recommend baking in an enamel Dutch oven instead of on a pan. The Dutch oven holds plenty of heat, and gives you a nice vessel in which to stir the corn. I got much better coating and didn’t spill anything, versus the pan which was challenging.
I knew the popcorn was not going to be easily turned on a baking sheet so I kept it in a bowl and poured the caramel sauce on top of it and mixed it before I put it on a baking sheet. It worked out fine that way. I wish I would of read the reviews before I made it because someone said if your adding nuts, add it to the caramel sauce because they don’t coat properly if just added to the popcorn. Regardless, they did get some caramel coating and the taste is awesome! Very buttery!
This recipe was really good! I’m going to make some more tonight. Ty!
Made it for a concert series one week and had people asking me to bring it again.
Delicious! Next time I am adding nuts. I used a disposable turkey roaster pan sprayed with butter flavored oil to oven age. It made it easier to mix and remove once cooled. Happy wife, happy life.
If you are going to add peanuts , or any kind of nuts , i suggest that you add them to the caramel sauce before pouring onto the popcorn , otherwise they dont get covered and because they are heavier than popped corn , they do not stick and end up at the bottom of the bowl;
Same recipe as I have used for years, with one small exception. I use 6 quarts of corn, this may help the ones who thought it was to caramelly.
I read the reviews, so I adjusted a tiny bit, and it is delicious! I popped 1 cup of kernels, and I salted the popcorn after popping, and the sweet/salty balance was perfect, without adjusting any of the measurements of the ingredients. The amount of caramel to popcorn was spot on; sweet and gooey enough but not too much. I didn’t put all the popcorn in a bowl because I didn’t have one big enough, so I separated the popcorn in the 2 baking dishes and poured the caramel into each and stirred. I baked at 200, and followed baking instructions. This caramel popcorn is super yummy!
The caramel came out way too thick. It was more like a thick glue and when it began cooling even a little, it hardened up. There was no way to ‘coat all the kernels.’ I just spooned it out and tried to distribute it as best I could without turning the popcorn into tiny crumbs.
This is great! First batch only lasted a couple days. Just added some dry roasted peanuts.
Sweet, crispy, light and scrumptious! I added a cup of mixed nuts. Just can’t stop eating it!
Add chopped peanuts if you want.
Fabulous, we love it, the go to for Carmel Corn
Easy and delicious, what more could you ask!
We loved it! The only thing I’m changing is I’ll be making much more than it recommends! Perfect!
Easy to make. Is better than the County Fair. Making a again to share with even more friends! I’m 70 and always, always wanted to make.
Have your dental floss handy! Absolutely delicious and soooo hard to kept out of it. I ordered mushroom popcorn kernels from nuts dot com and popped the kernels using hot oil as per the attached instructions. It came out looking like I bought it but tasted much better! Stirred every 10 minutes, convection oven at 200. Looking forward to adding nuts for the next batch (I feel there’s enough caramel that adding a cup or two of nuts won’t impact the final coating).