Okay we all know why popcorn pops. What would happen if you boiled it? Would it pop into a soggy mess? Maybe the kernels would just soften up.I don’t know and unfortunatly I have none in the house to experiment with. This stupid question has been bothering me all day.Help!
I have some popcorn. Do you wish me to experiment for you?
Go ahead Kat. I’m sick of cleaning up the experiments at my place when curiousity gets the better of me. Let us know how it turned out.
My guess: Nothing will happen. The kernel will shield the water inside just a few degrees. At least enough to keep it from popping.
Results of Boiling Popcorn: Wet, hot popcorn kernals. They don’t pop and they don’t soften. They do dance around the bottom of the pan, though.
My guess is that boiling water simply isn’t hot enough; by definition, only 100 degrees C. Oil can get hotter than that, and contact with the bottom of the pot probably allows popcorn to get hotter during normal popping methods. I’m not familiar with the critical temperature for popping, but you might try adding a good deal of salt to the boiling water to raise it’s temperature. That way, if it pops it will already be salted.
Try it in a pressure cooker! When it’s a maximum pressure, remove the lid and maybe the kernels will all pop at once… ummm, throwing boiling water and live steam into the air.
Maybe you’d better not do this…
(*) by “brave”, I of course mean “extremely stupid”.
Thanks everyone. I’m impressed.I am surprised that nothing happened to the kernals when boiled. Another mystery solved.
Salt in the water probably won’t help, either. It does increase the boiling point of water, but by a darn small amount. The only reason to add salt is flavor.
Popcorn pops because the moisture inside the kernal turns into steam. Being inside the kernal, the water will be under pressure, so the boiling point of the water inside the kernal will be higher than the boiling point of water at room pressure. I suspect the pressure cooker bit probably won’t work either, since the moisture in the kernal will still be under pressure relative to the water in the pressure cooker. I don’t plan on conducting this experiment, as the results will either be hot, soggy kernals, or hot soggy popcorn, neither one of which sounds very appetizing.
Kevin B.
A recent blurb I read was about some fun experiments in what happens to popcorn in low pressure. Result, popped corn several inches in width. They even had a little formula for working out how wide it was going to get in a given pressure.
Wish I could dig it up again, unfortunately, all my search terms seem to turn up blood pressure and salted popcorn debates. 
I was curious that since i heard that you can grind popcorn and make mush and bread, etc. Can I boil pop corn and make regular corn. Like a dehydrated corn. After reading what i have so far, I’m guessing not. If any have any thoughts on this please do tell.
There is, or was, a touristy shop in downtown Dahlonega, GA that sells/sold popcorn grits, which amounted to coarsely ground popcorn. Some people told me it cooked up just like regular grits. I don’t think you’d ever get anything like sweet corn no matter how long you boiled popcorn.
Not even if you boiled it non-stop since the last time this thread was active 12 years ago!!!
It would soften up some after boiling, but never get to the level of tenderness as fresh corn before turning to mush.
Lol. Thank you. Good to know. 12 years and still got a quick response. Amazing. Has anyone here tried grinding it to use it for mush or corn bread, before I buy way too much for my food storage. Thanks again.
mutessi1978 - to answer your first question, popcorn is corn that pops because it is a breed of corn that grows with less water within the kernels. It isn’t just regular corn that has been dehydrated. And since the husk of the kernel is fairly hard and watertight, boiling doesn’t penetrate it and soften the kernel.
As for your second question, I bet that you can get more responses if you take your question to the “Cafe” section of this board and post it there. It would be an interesting topic there.
Doesn’t hurt to start a new thread since this one is a zombie.
On edit: I see that these are your first posts. Starting a new thread is pretty easy and anybody can do it. Just look for the “new thread” button in the top left area of the “Cafe” page.
I saw this machine a few days ago: Rice cakes machine (Magic pop) by Delice - YouTube it appears to be what would happen if you cooked popcorn in a pressure cooker, then suddenly depressurised it. (It’s a machine to make popped rice snacks, a healthier alternative to chips. I guess it’s like rice krispies, as a giant cracker.)
Google “vacuum popcorn”
Discover magazine: “The physics of popcorn”
Nature: “Popcorn gets poppier”
Pressure is apparently the preferred way to go about things in China; you can find lots of videos like this one where the popcorn doesn’t so much “pop” as “BOOM”.
A very similar operation is used to make lots of breakfast cereals out of puffed rice, wheat, corn, and oats. Look up “gun puffing”; the name comes from the fact that the first such pressure cookers used were made from recycled cannons.
Yes, we have a grain mill and that’s how we obtain all of our cornmeal. Cornmeal isn’t exactly expensive to buy, but popcorn is even cheaper, and the end product is essentially identical. We don’t do mush, but it makes for excellent cornbread.
According to On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee, popcorn pops at around 380° F (190° C). This is far hotter than boiling water.
The mechanism by which popcorn pops requires that the temperature be above boiling for it to pop - the pressure from the heated water inside the kernel must be high enough to make the kernel explode. Water boils in a pot when its vapor pressure exceeds atmospheric pressure. At this point the water pressure inside the kernel just about balances the air pressure outside the kernel. This just isn’t enough to make the kernel pop.