Wasabi and Ginger Popcorn

A half-cup of kernels gave me 14 cups of popcorn, which is just shy of 4 quarts. More importantly, it kept the five of us supplied with popcorn while watching a movie on the couch. The stars here are definitely the wasabi and candied ginger, and the wasabi peas prompted a friend to call it the “Asian Crackerjack.” I don’t like my popcorn overly buttery, so 3 tablespoons was enough for a little butter taste. I actually preferred it with just wasabi peas and not the candied ginger, but my friends liked the sweet and salty combination. This is definitely going into the rotation on movie nights.

This recipe for wasabi ginger popcorn makes a concoction that’s more of a cocktail munchie than popcorn. It’s spicy, cool, piquant, and mysterious—as in, what are those black things on my popcorn and why do I keep eating them? There’s one thing I’ll try the next time I make it: Crushing the wasabi peas, so that they don’t fall to the bottom of the bowl. When you get a mouthful of sesame, ginger, wasabi, and popcorn, that extra degree of heat and texture from the peas gets lost if you missed picking one up.

Hot and spicy popcorn lovers, rejoice! This wasabi ginger popcorn is a creative way to use that extra wasabi paste kicking around. I actually preferred this popcorn without the wasabi-flavored fried peas. This was a very interesting and yummy snack, in that it had all kinds of things going on at once in each bite—from the crunch of the black sesame seeds (which look great in the popcorn, by the way) and the sweet-hot-spicy kick of the candied ginger. The melted butter and addition of sugar and salt tempered the otherwise hot wasabi paste a bit. The heat ratio really worked; it provided some kick, but wasn’t too spicy to mask everything else. Consider yourself warned of its addictive properties.

Although the introductory notes describe this as a “fiery snack,” it wasn’t actually that spicy. But it was addictive, delicious, and interesting enough to make again—and regularly—especially to warm up these blustery, snowy winter nights! The combination of wasabi paste (I used wasabi powder and mixed it into a paste myself), peas and candied ginger creates warmth. The resulting snack wasn’t spicy hot; rather, it was warm, with lots of interesting flavors and textures: the freshly popped corn, chewy little bits of candied ginger, crunchy wasabi peas, and the tiny popping of the black sesame seeds, which added flavor as well as visual appeal.

We wondered about using a bit less butter the next time, but only to lessen the popcorn’s greasiness—not for flavor reasons. Though the popcorn was a little greasy, and required some stacks of napkins, that didn’t stop us from returning to the bowl for multiple passes and devouring the batch with good speed.

The Wasabi Ginger Popcorn has a nice amount of tangy heat. With the wasabi peas adding to the punch, it’s zesty, but not overpowering. My only concern is that most of the goodies migrated to the bottom of the bowl.