Review of Orville Redenbacher Popcorn

Hey, you know I love popcorn.

Today I’m reviewing Orville Redenbacher popcorn. This is about the best-known brand when it comes to popcorn. Orville Redenbacher thinks of themselves as one pop better than the rest, gourmet popcorn.

That means Orville Redenbacher is usually priced much higher than the competitors and comes in smaller portions.

But in real life, how does Orville Redenbacher stand up?

This is a job for Cheryl at The Lifestyle Digs!

Sunbeam hot air popcorn machine

I usually make popcorn inside a Sunbeam hot air popcorn machine that I’ve owned for decades. I make popcorn regularly and my old hot air popcorn machine is still working fine. You can’t buy this brand anymore. What’s up with that?

It takes about 5 or 6 minutes from the time I start getting my machine and popcorn together, until I have a bowl full of nice, ready-to-eat, healthy popcorn. I suppose “healthy” depends on whether I eat it dry or pimp it out a bit.

Orville Redenbacher and the hot air popcorn machine

I get my good old Sunbeam hot air popcorn popper set up, turn it on, pour in Orville Redenbacher’s gourmet popcorn, and wait for the machine to do its thing.

After a couple of minutes, the hot air popper spat out a couple of unpopped kernels. That often happens when popcorn is just beginning to pop. With the hot air and kernels in the spinning chamber, sometimes a popped kernel will send a few unpopped kernels into the bowl. With other popcorn brands I get maybe a dozen unpopped kernels landing in the bowl. They’re really hot, so I have a spoon standing by to scoop them out and get them back inside the hot air popcorn machine.

Once more kernels start popping and floating inside the popping chamber, they hold back any more unpopped kernels from escaping.

Not so with Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn. The hot air machine was spitting out dozens of unpopped kernels along with the occasional popped kernel into the bowl.

Yikes!

I grabbed another bowl out of the cupboard and quickly swapped it with the bowl that was mostly filling with unpopped Orville Redenbacher popcorn kernels.

The popcorn that popped, I put into my second bowl. Then I tipped the bowl of unpopped kernels back into the Sunbeam hot air popcorn machine.

Not good

Meanwhile, the second bowl was quickly filling up with unpopped kernels.

This was crazy. There were more unpopped kernels flying out of the hot air popcorn machine than ready to eat popcorn. They were flying out hard and fast like little missiles.

Over and over I did the same thing, swapping out the bowls, sliding popped popcorn into the one beneath the hot air machine, and dumping the unpopped kernels back inside the chamber.

I lost count of how many times I did this.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch….

It took nearly 15 minutes for most of the Orville Redenbacher popcorn to pop in the hot air popcorn machine. During the time inbetween swapping out the bowls and reloading unpopped kernels, I looked at the instructions on the jar to confirm that Orville Redenbacher popcorn was suitable for hot air poppers, and sure enough it was.

15 minutes is a long time to wait for popcorn!

And my poor old Sunbeam hot air popcorn machine became really hot. Burn risk factor! Normally it doesn’t heat up like that on the outside because it’s not usually in action for so long!

The popcorn tasted fine.

However, Orville Redenbacher popcorn is too much of a hassle. It’s definitely hands on and the whole process takes a lot longer that it takes other brands of popcorn to pop in the hot air popcorn machine.

Too much of a pain in the ass to try that one again!

Though I did put Orville Redenbacher popcorn into the hot air machine one more time to make this video.

Stovetop

The next day I was craving popcorn, but not the time consuming process with Orville Redenbacher popcorn in the hot air popcorn machine.

I decided to do something I haven’t done in decades: pop popcorn in a pot on the stove.

I put in a heaping spoonful of coconut oil and once it melted, I added about a third a cup of Orville Redenbacher popcorn and shook the pan to cover the kernels with oil.

After a couple of minutes they started popping. I had the lid on the pan so those kernels weren’t going anywhere!

They were done popping after another couple of minutes, so the stovetop method took around 5 minutes. That’s about the same amount of time it takes me to pop other brands of popcorn inside my hot air popcorn machine.

Seeing as how the hot air popper takes 15 minutes to pop Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn, I’d shaved about 10 minutes off my time using the stove top method.

Final verdict

It’s popcorn. I don’t notice a huge difference in taste between Orville Redenbacher gourmet popcorn versus less expensive store brand popcorn.

I prefer to use my Sunbeam hot air popcorn machine. Based on Orville Redenbacher popcorn spitting out all the unpopped kernels, I give it a fail.

Related reading

Make sure you check out my post about fun with popcorn.