Orville Redenbacher Presto 04821 Hot Air Popper Review

To me, one of the nicest things about going to the movies is buying a bag of popcorn and adding some melted butter and a pinch or two of salt, then consuming it while watching the feature presentation and washing it down with a nice cup of Coca-Cola.

Of course. one can make popcorn at home, too.  In microwave ovens, mostly, but some people still use either (a) Jiffy Pop stovetop popcorn (b) improvised poppers, or (c) popcorn makers of various makes and brands.

Until very late in 2007, if I wanted popcorn at home I'd usually get Orville Redenbacher's Microwave Popcorn. We had owned a very good popcorn maker in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but after it finally stopped working during my college years, we relied on the various microwave ovens and those convenient kernels-and-oil-in-a-bag packages to enjoy a salty snack while watching movies on first our videocassette recorder and later our DVD players.

Then the news that some types of microwave popcorn weren't exactly very safe to eat - something about a compound used to make the artificial butter flavor being a carcinogen - made me reassess the need, previously unforeseen, of having an old-fashioned popcorn maker in the house. I didn't want to risk the health of my mom or mine because we love popcorn and "nuking it" is really easy, but I also didn't want to give up popcorn altogether, and neither did my mom.

I also have to admit that though some varieties of nuke-able popcorn are very good and tasty, the mouth-feel and taste doesn't quite measure up to those of either movie theater popcorn or the traditional home-made varieties. Plain, unbuttered varieties are always best since they don't have that somewhat odd aftertaste that the "butter flavored" nuke-able popcorns seem to have, but even so, if one is unlucky or careless and even just a portion of a bag gets scorched or worse, microwave popcorn is worse than, well, bantha poodoo.

Thus it came to pass that four months after we began our moratorium of microwave popcorn, my mom asked me to look in the Internet for a reliable but inexpensive popcorn maker. It didn't take too much prodding because I had been thinking of at least researching poppers at Amazon and Epinions, but knowing my mom, I knew that what she wanted me to do was to look up various styles/brands, check prices, and buy one, so long as the price stayed within the budget limit of $40.00
I looked at a few promising poppers, but the one that I decided upon was the Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper.

I'd love to claim that I chose the Presto 04821 because it uses no oil and is therefore healthier to use on a regular basis, but that was only a secondary (but still important) consideration.

I'd also like to say that I wasn't swayed to buy this popper because it had the Orville Redenbacher brand name. It's a good sales pitch, since Orville Redenbacher popcorn products usually are pretty good, but the company doesn't, as far as my Internet research has been able to determine, manufacture its own popcorn makers, pretty much in the same vein as all those Tom Clancy's Op-Center and Tom Clancy's Power Plays novels only bear the Clancy brand name but aren't written by the once-popular author himself.

What did sell me on the Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper were the following criteria:

The Presto name: My mom and I have been using many Presto products for as long as I can remember. We still have a Presto pressure cooker that we've lugged from house to house over the past 40 years or so, and the Fry Baby/Fry Daddy deep fryers we once owned each lasted well over a decade, so we both trust the Presto name.

Ease of use: Of course, it's hard to discern how easy a product is to use unless (a) a consumer reads reviews (such as this one) in sites along the lines of Epinions, Viewpoints, or (overseas) Ciao, or (b) buys the product and tries it out for him/herself, but in the Amazon product page, it sure looked easy to use. It seemed rather simple to assemble and operate - place the proper amount of popcorn into the bottom unit, place the cover and the measuring cup/butter melter on top, place a four-quart non-melting bowl next to the popcorn chute to catch the fluffy white kernels, plug in, and, voila! In less than three minutes, one has a nice bowl of popcorn. There is no oil required, and if one wants butter on the popcorn, the measuring cup doubles as a butter melter.

Indeed, this part of the sales pitch is all true. The manual only adds a few preliminary steps, such as washing the cover and the butter melter before first use of a Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper, making sure the grounded plug fits into a standard wall socket (otherwise the popper won't work), and proper assembly and disassembly for cleanup and storage, but the claims that the unit is easy to use and clean are true.

Of course, thePresto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper does have its eccentricities. First, one must be mindful of the unit at all times; it starts working as soon as it's plugged in, so one has to carefully measure the popcorn (a level half-cup on the butter melter/measuring cup component) and put it in the bottom part before plugging it in. Second, no matter how secure the top parts are (and the butter melter must always be on top even if one doesn't plan on using butter), the Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper will spit out several kernels like little maize missiles. Third, the popping process is faster than most people who nuke popcorn in microwaves might be accustomed to. And finallly, it's good to let the unit cool off before making another batch; if the Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper's internal temperature gets too high, it automatically shuts down.

Although air-popped popcorn lacks the more robust flavor of flint corn prepared in the old-fashioned manner of oil-in-a-covered-pot or makers that require oil, it does taste better than microwaved popcorn. There's no scorching (at least, on my first batch there wasn't), no nasty aftertaste, and no carcinogens present, and the blandness of the flavor can be compensated for by judicious use of salt and/or melted butter. Plus, especially for those of us over 40 and who worry about watching our intake of fats and cholesterol, air popping is the best route to take, especially if we use Smart Balance or any other healthy (but tasty) butter substitute in the melter.

The Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper is easy to clean up. The cover and butter melter are removed and washed with warm water and soap, rinsed, then dried. The bottom unit is easier still to clean....make sure there are no unpopped kernels inside - there's usually one or two left - and...once the unit has cooled, empty the contents into a trash bag. Of course, this is kind of obvious, but never immerse the cooking unit in water or put butter or oil in it. This will ruin Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper and create a possibly lethal electric shock hazard.

The unit itself is compact and doesn't take up a lot of room on a kitchen counter. It's easy to assemble and disassemble, so one can simply use the original box in which the Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper comes in to store the popper if other appliances have taken up all the counter space.

All in all, the Presto 04821 Orville Redenbacher Hot Air Corn Popper is a good and surprisingly affordable popcorn maker; at Amazon.com it sells for $29.99, which isn't too bad, especially at a time when most of us are tightening our budgets, what with the country in wartime and a recession and all.