When I found out that this month’s Cooks In The Kitchen Challenge ingredient was limes, I was so excited. I absolutely LOVE limes. I’ve never met a lime I didn’t like. Key Lime Pie? My favorite pie! Margaritas? Ok! Lime vinaigrette? Yes, please. How could I possibly choose a lime recipe that everyone else wasn’t going to do?! It had to be something unique AND delicious.
Another concern? The Great Lime Shortage of 2014. Not only are limes hard to FIND, but they’re crazy expensive! I’m talking sixty nine cents for one tiny little shriveled lime. Poor limes.
After floating several different recipes and brainstorming with Alyssa, I decided to go for a savory recipe that has Alyssa & Carla written all over it: Popcorn with Garlic Lime Butter!
First off, if you’re having trouble finding limes, check your local Mexican grocery! After striking out on finding ANY limes at my local grocery store, I was able to find this ridiculously large bag of Key Limes for four dollars. Four dollars! In this market! (Sorry for all these exclamation points, limes excite me.)
There were A TON of limes in that bag. I thought about sharing my recipe for a limeade concentrate you can freeze and so I ended up squeezing all the limes for juice. I ended up with close to 1 1/2 cups of juice! For such tiny limes (Key Limes are smaller than Persian Limes- which is the lime we usually find in the grocery store), that’s quite a yield.
- 3 tablespoons Key Lime juice (or 1/4 cup of Persian Lime juice)
- 1 to 2 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- air popped popcorn (about 1/2 cup of unpopped kernels)
- In a small saucepan, melt two tablespoons of butter. Crush or mince garlic and saute lightly in melted butter.
- Add rest of butter to saucepan until all butter is just melted.
- Add garlic and butter mixture, salt and lime juice to a blender and blend well. (Also works with a stick blender!)
- Drizzle desired amount of butter onto air-popped popcorn!
- Try the butter once blended- you may want to add a little extra salt to taste!
Wanna see last month’s Cooks in the Kitchen Challenge recipe? It was Semi Sweet Chocolate Chip Hot Fudge Sauce!
Like popcorn and lime? Alyssa has a fantastic version of Chipotle Lime Popcorn!
Yum! This sounds amazing! I’m such a popcorn fan!
Ooh, what a creative recipe! I love all things popcorn so I think I’m going to give this recipe a try!