Why does microwave popcorn only start to burn when it stops popping?

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If I cook a full sized bag of popcorn, it doesn’t start to burn until after 3 or 4 minutes when the popping slows, but if I cook a snack sized bag, it will burn in 2 or 3 minutes after the popping slows. But shouldn’t individual popped kernels start to burn based on how long since they popped?

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

When the popcorn is popping, the microwave energy is going into turning the water in the kernels into steam. This causes the corn to pop, whereby the steam is released.

After that, the microwave energy just going into the popped popcorn, which will start to burn it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most microwaves now have a popcorn button which prompts you for the portion size of the popcorn bag you’re putting in the microwave. You should try it out. There’s a wide variety in technical sophistication for this feature among brands and models, but I find that it works with the majority of the ones I’ve tried it on.

The bags have a metal-powder infused concentrator element in them that gets heated absurdly fast by the magnetron in the microwave. The kernels themselves aren’t seeing as much of the microwave energy as you would think (which isn’t evenly heating inside the microwave anyway. For the most part what causes the popcorn to burn after popping is that they’re being compressed in the bag by all of the other popped kernels and this paired with them no longer being agitated by the popping means that they’re getting overcooked by the heat emitting from the element in the bag.

This is why the bag orientation in the microwave is noted on the bag as being important.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Maybe the kernels that burn are the ones that didn’t pop fully?