also…kettle corn: is it just popcorn with sugar added?
Popcorn is a variety of corn-on-the-cob (maize). It pops due to moisture in the kernel.
American Indians developed it along with other types of maize. Popcorn has been found by archaeologists in hearths dating from fairly early Amerindian sites.
About kettle corn, I know nothing.
There are 3 different kinds of corn.Field corn used in cattle feed,sweet corn which is often eaten on the cob,and pop corn.
Popcorn is a special kind of corn. The Gurney’s seed and nursery catalog ,due in many mailboxes this week, has 3 different varieties of popcorn.
Here is a recipe for Sugared Popcorn
1/2 cup unpopped corn
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoon bacan drippings
1/3 cup sugar
melt bacon drippings and combine with sugar.Combine water corn and hot sugar bacon drippings in a covered pan and pop over high heat.
Field corn can be “popped” and the resultant salted snack is called corn nuts.
Which are hard as a frigging rock.
I’ve seen kettle corn made at fairs and carnivals. Popcorn is made in the kettle and then scooped out. Into the kettle goes sugar, water and butter. It’s stirred to dissolve and cooked 'til it acquires a light straw color. The popped corn is returned to the kettle and stirred to coat with the sugar syrup. The coating is verythin and light and not too sweet, as oppsed to the caramel corn -type stuff which is much sweeter, heavier and tastes decidely of well-cooked sugar. The first time I had it I barely noticed the light sugar glaze on it. BUT, you don’t get a prize with either, so why bother!
Corn nuts are just toasted, not popped. The enormous size is due to a special strain of corn with giant kernels.
More than once, I have wondered what the reaction of the Indians was to the very first popcorn.
“What the hell did you DO, Susan?”
“I don’t KNOW, George! I mean, I just put it next to the fire, same as with all the OTHER corn, and it EXPLODED!”
From the Britannica on the varieties of corn.
"Commercial classifications, based mainly on kernel texture, include dent corn, flint corn, flour corn, sweet corn, and popcorn. Dent corn is characterized by a depression in the crown of the kernel caused by unequal drying of the hard and soft starch making up the kernel. Flint corn, containing little soft starch, has no depression. Flour corn, composed largely of soft starch, has soft, mealy, easily ground kernels. Sweet corn has wrinkled, translucent seeds; the plant sugar isnot converted to starch as in other types. Popcorn, an extreme type of flint corn characterized by small, hard kernels, is devoid of soft starch, and heating causes the moisture in the cells to expand, making the kernels explode. Improvements in corn have resulted from hybridization, based on crossbreeding of superior inbred strains.
Pop corn retains its moisture because of the extra hard shell. Sweet corn seems to me to be a variety that never matures properly. If you let sweet corn go to “maturity” the kernals are small, shriveled and loosely packed on the cob. Dent corn can be used as sweet corn when it is immature.
Maybe so but you can still use field corn to make the nuts.They swell which in my book is popping.
So OK before I have several nit pickers jumping down my throat there are more than 3 types of corn.
There is also broom corn. It is used to make ,drum roll please, brooms. It has no cob. The fruit grows at the end of the straws.
I also think that the corn variety used to make hominy is a special corn but I have never tried to make hominy so I’m not sure and I ain’t gonna look it up.
Can any type of seed be “popped”, and not just corn?
Only if it has a really hard shell and a relatively high moisure content.
I think the process goes something like this. Heat at a temperature quite a bit above the boiling point of water is applied. The interior of the kernal starts to expand building up a high pressure because of the hard shell. The water inside doesn’t vaporize because of the high pressure. Finally the pressure becomes too great for the shell which bursts. This rapidly lowers the pressure and the moisture flashes into vapor. Since the moisture is distributed through the entire interior contents of the seed the whole contents suddenly expands as the vapor expands.
Where are all our math/physics people? There must be a formula! 
We’ve had this before - there are some other things besides corn that will pop, but not just anything. As observed, it requires a hard shell to retain the superheated moisture.
Rice can apparently be popped, and you can find directions like this for doing it:
http://www.missroben.com/id636.html
Note that I am NOT discussing commercial “puffed” grains, which are a different process. I’m presuming that the rice has to be soaked as per those directions in order to have enough moisture to pop correctly.
[hijack]Writer H. Allen Smith said that when he died he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes “shot out of the guns that make puffed wheat.”[/highjack]
I think though, that it’s the same process. Superheated water is forced into the grain under pressure, then the pressure is suddenly released, the water turns to steam which rapidly expands along with the grain.
I should have said I wasn’t discussing MOST commercial grain cereals - another way to obtain popped rice is to go buy a box of Rice Krispies:
Dave’s post crossed mine - whether the “shot from guns” puffing process is “popping” or not is probably a matter of semantics.
Hominy is corn soaked in lye and then rinsed off. Its true!
It’s vegetarian lutefisk!!
Now THAT is colorful speech! YAYJAYJAY!