You have decided to get a popcorn maker to have great tasting, low-calorie popcorn. Now the decision needs to come down to whether a microwave popcorn maker is the right choice for you. For the best low-calorie popcorn, you really have two options, a microwave popcorn maker, or a hot air popcorn machine. Here’s a comparison of the two methods.

For sake of comparison, we will look at the options from Presto. They have both a microwave popcorn maker, and an air popcorn maker both approved by Orville Redennbacher.

With the microwave popcorn maker, you have have the option to either use oil, or to pop with no oil. With the hot air corn popper you only have the option of popping without oil. If you want a low-calorie treat, the no oil option is the best way to go. Since both units can pop without oil, there is no winner on this count.

The Orville Redennbacher Microwave Popcorn maker is specially designed to focus the microwaves power to the popping tray, to make sure you get the fewest amount of unpopped kernels possible. While this keeps the amount of unpopped kernels to a minimum, it is no match of the the air popcorn maker, which normally pops every kernel, or in the worst case leaves only a couple kernels unpopped. The winner on this step is the air popcorn machine, but not by a big amount.

  by  Tony Crider 

The microwave popcorn maker produces one bowl of popcorn, and does it very quickly at about 3 minutes, depending on the power of your microwave. While this may be impressive, the air popcorn maker produces 18 cups of popcorn, or two full bowls, in only 2 1/2 minutes. This is one case where the air popcorn maker wins easily.

What about price of using the popcorn machine? The microwave popcorn maker uses the power of your microwave, while the air popcorn maker uses it’s own heating unit and air blower. From an electrical standpoint it is almost an equal use of power. We need to take a look at one more item about power usage. Do you like butter on your popcorn? If you need to melt the butter in the microwave after popping, then the power usage goes higher for the microwave method. The hot air corn popper allows you to melt the butter at the same time you pop the corn.

The bigger difference in cost comes in the cups used in the microwave popcorn maker. You use this disposable cup in the bottom of the bowl to help focus the microwave energy. This adds to the cost of each bowl of popcorn. The air popcorn machine has no other consumables.

The cost of the two units is only a few dollars different. The microwave popcorn maker is lower cost to start off with, but will quickly make up the difference in price with the consumable cups.

If you want the best long term option, the air popcorn maker wins over the microwave popcorn maker in almost every step. Whichever method you choose, you can have great tasting popcorn, and much easier clean-up than popping on your stove top.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 2:34 am and is filed under microwave popcorn maker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.