Farm Bulletin: Growing a Better Popcorn

I had always assumed that farmers either bought seed from seed companies or saved seed from their own crops, simply replanting them every year. It never occurred to me that farmers could actually develop their own crops by selecting for various characteristics like flavor and the ability to thrive in the field in winter. This essay by contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm outlines his journey with one variety of corn to achieve a particular result—a perfect popcorn.

It came to us as "Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored Popcorn," a dry mouthful by any measure, and one of numerous popcorn varieties we tried early in the corn project. We have found when seed house descriptions lovingly linger of the color of the kernel and its diminutive proportions, just around the corner disappointment also lingers. That is a certainty. A few years ago, Glass Gem corn was released with great fanfare. Rhapsodic descriptions of its immense and ancient beauty spilled forth. Our mailbox filled with forwarded links to the breathless description. Not a whisper about its flavor, though, and since then the hype has faded. The best we have heard is that it is not really bad. In contrast, the descriptions of the Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored Popcorn made note of the buttery flavor, going so far as to assert that butter was wasted on it. That hooked us.

This year's harvest…that's alotta popcorn!

The first year we planted Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored Popcorn we were immediately struck by what a mess it was, not just a plain, off-white kernel, but the ears were runty and malformed, a substantial proportion of kernels prone to silk cut, a defect which means they don't pop. The plants lodged—fell over—at the merest zephyr. Then there was the insanely long name. Linda Colwell helped us many a gloomy afternoon as we salvaged the early crops. The challenge posed by the litany of flaws could not distract us from the lovely flavor. Reminiscent of Osgood Fielding III* as he patiently hears out Daphne's long list flaws, no corn is perfect.

Amish Butter polenta, great with lamb (recipe).

With time, we have managed to eliminate most of the flaws in Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored Popcorn. The geneticist Barbara McClintock describes the process as getting "a sense of the organism." Previously, we have described the process as developing a design brief. Once smitten, your focus shifts to teasing out certain qualities. The grower uncovers the genetic map walking down the row and observing each plant, cataloging the variation. One of the first flaws was easily eliminated by renaming it the not-quite-synonymous but much shorter "Amish Butter." From 38 letters down to an efficient eleven. Likewise, silk cut went rapidly from 38% to 11%, and now it is just a fraction of a percent. Slowly, other growers have followed suit on the name, some keeping the "flavored popcorn" as though it would clarify something.

Linda Colwell's Sibley squash tamales.

Early on, we also discovered is its fine quality as ground corn. Popcorn has the highest protein content of the corn types, and it makes perfect sense that this variety that happens to pop would make a good cornmeal for cooking up as polenta. The white polenta works well with fungi, cheese, lamb and seafood. It also makes a lovely hominy, superb in a seafood pozole. After the New Year, Linda came over with a selection of her expertly prepared Amish Butter tamales. Just as we have developed a sense of the organism, Linda has developed a keen sense of the ingredient. This is why we must leave out popcorn from its name, unless we are selling kernels for that purpose. No corn is perfect, but Amish Butter is damn close. Come to think of it, Jack Lemmon was pretty close to perfect as well.

* Osgood Fielding III (Character)
from Some Like It Hot (1959)

Osgood Fielding III (l, played by Joe E. Brown) and Daphne (played by Jack Lemmon)

Jerry: Oh no you don't! Osgood, I'm gonna level with you. We can't get married at all.
Osgood: Why not?
Jerry: Well, in the first place, I'm not a natural blonde.
Osgood: Doesn't matter.
Jerry: I smoke! I smoke all the time!
Osgood: I don't care.
Jerry: Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I've been living with a saxophone player.
Osgood: I forgive you.
Jerry: [tragically] I can never have children!
Osgood: We can adopt some.
Jerry: But you don't understand, Osgood! Ohh...
[Jerry finally gives up and pulls off his wig]
Jerry: [normal voice] I'm a man!
Osgood: [shrugs] Well, nobody's perfect!
[Jerry looks on with disbelief as Osgood continues smiling with indifference. Fade out]

Farm Bulletin: Little Doves, Little Flowers or Le Popcorn

This week Carol and Anthony Boutard will be featuring their homegrown popcorn in addition to myriad heirloom dried beans, squash, dried peppers and roots at their stall at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market. Find them between 10 am and 2 pm on Sunday.

Popcorn: Amish Butter & Pink Beauty

This ancient whole grain snack is called palomitas, "little doves," in Spanish. In other languages, it is called "little flowers." To the French, it is le popcorn. Until the 20th century, Americans referred to it as "parching corn." Given the French epithet, we were surprised there was no regression to calling it "parching corn" during that dark, Francophobic "liberty fries" era of the early 21st century.

A separate class of maize, popcorn has many ancestral traits. The kernels are small, pointed and arranged in an imbricated manner on very small ears, similar to the way dominoes rest upon one another when they fall. And, of course, they pop. Some of the most ancient remains of maize found, for example in the Bat Cave of New Mexico that was occupied 3,000 years ago, have popping type kernels. Pre-Columbian popping varieties of corn were found from New England to Peru. The diffusion of popcorn was accompanied by the manufacture of special clay vessels to pop the kernels. They were designed to contain the explosions while allowing the moisture released in the process to escape.

An effort must be made to keep popping, sweet, flour and flint strains of maize separate as they easily hybridize via the wind, resulting in the popping types losing their explosive oomph, the sweet types becoming starchy and tough and the flour types developing a flinty nature. Pre-Columbian cultures did a good job of developing and maintaining clean genetic lines of these various strains. In his treatise, Corn: Its Origin, Evolution and Improvement, Mangelsdorf notes that the indigenous Americans were expert corn breeders.

In an interesting digression, Mangelsdorf ponders whether their sheer love of the crop overcame the challenge of managing its complex genetics. Here is a man educated in the age of genetics, statistics and analytical biology grappling the most magnificent achievement of plant breeding, yet it was accomplished by anonymous individuals guided by custom and folklore. Paradoxically, the 20th century "scientific" contribution to maize has been almost entirely negative. In the modern hybrids we have succeeded in dramatically reducing the protein, vitamin and mineral content of the grain, and its flavor to boot. The kernels must be coated with powerful fungicides to aid germination, and the growing plants demand a full arsenal of chemicals in order to survive. The only charitable thing to say about these hybrids is that they produce great quantities of the depauperate grain. There is little to love in the modern hybrids.

Most commercial popcorn produced today is from carefully selected modern hybrid seeds from a narrow genetic base. The commercial varieties have a yellow aleurone layer. At the present, there are no transgenic (GMO) varieties of popcorn in commerce. Old varieties of popcorn have been preserved, and the flavor difference is readily apparent. They also have a wide range of aleurone layer colors, including white, yellow, red, pink and black. We grow two excellent popcorn varieties well suited to the short Willamette Valley growing season, and completely lovable as well.

"Amish Butter," also known as "Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored," has been traced in the literature to the mid 19th century, though it is more ancient than that. Long popular among the Amish farmers of Pennsylvania, the variety was restored to the commercial seed trade by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in 1988. It is designated a RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions) variety.

"Pink Beauty" is from the Sand Hill Preservation Center, the same people from whom we order sweet potato slips. The center, run by Glenn and Linda Drowns, functions as a source of genetic material for farmers, rather than a regular seed company. We are not sure what prompted us to grow it; Glenn simply notes that the flavor is good. The understated "tastes good" seems to hook us every time. Tasting it, we find the kernels are even more tender than Amish Butter, and the flavor is different as well. Very satisfying. With Pink Beauty, there are a few more popless kernels at the bottom of the pan. We hope to select out better popping ears for our seed stock.

Neither Amish Butter nor Pink Beauty needs anything more than a light sprinkle of salt. We pop ours in a pan with a small amount of grape seed oil, using a spatter screen in place of a lid to allow the moisture to escape. Our friend Beth noted that these older varieties are more tender and better flavored when cooked in a pan with oil, rather than an air popper. We bought an air popper last week as a tool for testing popping rates for seed ears, a critical factor when saving the seeds. We have to agree with Beth, the pan and oil is the better way.