The Great Australain Microwave Popcorn Challenge

L lately has taken to eating popcorn while we watch TV and every time I make a bag she claims that on a different night the popcorn was better. As there are only 3 brands that we can purchase at the grocery stores I challenged her to a blind taste test.

Our other reason for creating this challenge is to determine if the Mini Poppin Microwave Popcorn is worth the extra money and the less quantity simply because it's a better tasting product.

The Challengers

• Woolworths Select Microwave Popcorn Butter Flavored 40g bag
• Coles Microwave Popcorn Butter Flavored 40g bag (link is to 200g size)
• Mini Poppin Microwave Popcorn 25g (link to Poppin's funky website)

The Challengers

These products are the smaller cousins of the large bags of popcorn that each brand sells. The Coles and Woolworths are 15g larger that the Popping brand and actually cost less per box even though each individual package has more grams than the Poppin brand. Each box comes with 5 packages of popcorn.

How we tested 
Since we only had 1 microwave oven I popped the bags in the microwave in following order:

• Woolworths 1min 40sec
• Coles 1min 40sec
• Poppin 1min 20sec

After the bag was removed from the microwave I left it unopened on the counter until all bags were popped. The times that we used are from our experience popping these different brands/bags of popcorn. These times minimise the number of unpopped kernels left in the bag.

After popping all of the bags, some popcorn was poured into a coloured bowl. The identity of each bowls brand was only known our corn popper, me. The judge L, was not aware of what brand was in what bowl.

Our Judge.
As you can see we don't just eat Popcorn. On the table is watermelon, mango, banana and rock melon (cantaloupe).

The results
It was noted during the taste test that the reddish bowl, the Woolworths brand, seemed a little soggier than the Coles and Poppins brand. This may be due to the fact that we left the popcorn in the bag until all the bags had been popped and since the Woolworths brand was first popped it could have allowed for more condensation to build up in the bag.

L rated the Coles and Poppins brand a tie for first and Woolworth's brand second. But L said that in reality the difference was so slight that any brand could be as good as the other, hence a 3 way tie.

So what can we take away from this?  

• Open the bag immediately after popping to reduce condensation build-up so that the popcorn doesn't get soggy. 
• The Poppin brand isn't any better than Coles or Woolworths and is may not be worth the extra price. 
• 25g is really a piddly small amount of popcorn but 40g is a nice size for a small snack when sharing between 2 people. 

Our Recommendation
Picking Coles or Woolworths brand is a wise choice with regards to taste and money savings. Which brand you choose really depends on where you do your weekly shopping.