WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.229 --> 00:00:01.229
Hello.

00:00:01.229 --> 00:00:02.240
It is still november.

00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:06.000
With that out of the way, does your microwave
oven have a popcorn button?

00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:07.930
Yeah, mine too.

00:00:07.930 --> 00:00:11.957
Lots of microwave ovens come with a dedicated
button for popping microwave popcorn,

00:00:11.957 --> 00:00:16.220
yet on nearly every bag of microwave popcorn sold in a store

00:00:16.220 --> 00:00:20.128
you’ll find a rather stern warning making it clear in no uncertain terms

00:00:20.128 --> 00:00:22.689
that that button is forbidden.

00:00:22.689 --> 00:00:25.020
Do NOT use the popcorn button.

00:00:25.090 --> 00:00:26.712
This might make you question

00:00:26.712 --> 00:00:28.565
“why do we even have that button?”

00:00:28.565 --> 00:00:31.314
and you know what? That’s a great question.

00:00:31.314 --> 00:00:34.152
But I’m gonna tell you something wild and devious:

00:00:34.647 --> 00:00:36.892
you should try it and see what happens.

00:00:36.892 --> 00:00:37.641
Try it.

00:00:37.641 --> 00:00:39.220
You know you want to.

00:00:39.638 --> 00:00:43.200
See, I got this question from a patron of the channel recently.

00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:49.368
Jolly Orville Secret Redenbacher Time II
has a great incentive to tell you not to use the popcorn button.

00:00:49.368 --> 00:00:53.562
The popcorn producers of the world don’t know anything about your microwave,

00:00:53.562 --> 00:00:57.675
and some microwave oven manufacturers are dirty little liars

00:00:57.675 --> 00:01:02.496
and put a popcorn button on microwaves that have no business having one.

00:01:02.496 --> 00:01:07.603
Oftentimes that button doesn't do anything
but set a pre-programmed cooking time

00:01:07.603 --> 00:01:12.294
and if you use it your popcorn will be either burnt to a crisp
or hardly popped at all

00:01:12.294 --> 00:01:16.619
with an approximately zero percent chance of
proper popping performance.

00:01:16.619 --> 00:01:19.198
Since nobody likes wasting popcorn,

00:01:19.198 --> 00:01:25.354
the popcorn people put a purportedly proper popcorn preparation primer
on every package of popcorn which usually involves

00:01:25.354 --> 00:01:29.457
listening for a gap of two seconds between pops to signal it’s done

00:01:29.457 --> 00:01:33.396
and don’t you EVER use the popcorn button.

00:01:33.396 --> 00:01:34.861
Not in this family!

00:01:34.861 --> 00:01:37.749
[voiceover]
Pardon the interruption but I need to make a correction:

00:01:37.749 --> 00:01:44.518
Of the brands shown here, 
Jolly Time stands out by not warning against using the popcorn button.

00:01:44.518 --> 00:01:47.623
As you’re about to learn, this is actually a nice gesture

00:01:47.623 --> 00:01:51.587
because it means they trust you to use your brain and experiment.

00:01:51.587 --> 00:01:57.174
And that’s the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism you can expect
from Technology Connections.

00:01:57.174 --> 00:01:59.193
As far as the rest of those brands, though -

00:01:59.193 --> 00:02:01.860
here’s the secret they don’t want you to know:

00:02:02.355 --> 00:02:08.838
Some microwaves are smarter than others and have
sensors to determine when things are done cooking.

00:02:08.838 --> 00:02:10.870
Like popcorn.

00:02:10.870 --> 00:02:14.157
And how do you know whether your microwave is among those better ones?

00:02:15.032 --> 00:02:16.916
Try the popcorn button.

00:02:16.916 --> 00:02:21.752
If you press the popcorn button and your microwave asks you the size of the bag,

00:02:21.752 --> 00:02:23.265
Danger, Will Robinson!

00:02:23.265 --> 00:02:28.145
That is probably a bad popcorn button which is sure to disappoint you.

00:02:28.145 --> 00:02:31.677
But if you press it and the microwave just starts…

00:02:31.677 --> 00:02:34.457
you might have a good popcorn button.

00:02:34.457 --> 00:02:37.846
Perhaps you still need to press the start button to make it go,

00:02:37.846 --> 00:02:43.097
and it might even give a message saying
that it’s designed for bags of a certain size,

00:02:43.097 --> 00:02:48.967
but so long as it doesn’t ask you to enter
or choose between values in ounces or grams,

00:02:48.967 --> 00:02:57.234
your microwave likely has some sort of sensor with which
it can determine when the popcorn is done and thus it will stop automatically.

00:02:57.234 --> 00:02:59.470
What sort of sensor, you ask?

00:02:59.470 --> 00:03:06.083
Broadly, a microwave with proper popcorn popping prowess
will have one or possibly two sensors onboard:

00:03:06.083 --> 00:03:10.744
a moisture sensor and if it’s very fancy a microphone.

00:03:10.744 --> 00:03:14.675
Microphones in microwaves are, I think, not super common

00:03:14.675 --> 00:03:17.809
so you are more likely to just have a moisture sensor.

00:03:17.809 --> 00:03:21.161
But don’t underestimate the power of moistness!

00:03:21.161 --> 00:03:25.686
With a bit of logic, that sensor can be used for all sorts of useful things,

00:03:25.686 --> 00:03:28.691
including automatic reheating of a meal or,

00:03:28.691 --> 00:03:33.840
if you go back in time to when appliances were actually trying to be smart
and not just connected to the internet,

00:03:33.840 --> 00:03:39.788
following specific parameters
to enable automatic cooking of specific kinds of foods.

00:03:39.788 --> 00:03:44.690
Sadly, the days of the
Sharp Carousel Multiple Choice have been over for like 20 years

00:03:44.690 --> 00:03:46.300
(at least outside of Japan).

00:03:46.300 --> 00:03:50.410
But lots of microwaves still have a moisture sensor.

00:03:50.410 --> 00:03:56.073
One way to tell whether you have that sensor
is if your microwave offers functions like “Sensor Reheat” -

00:03:56.073 --> 00:04:00.420
which, if it does, you should give that a try next time you’re reheating leftovers.

00:04:00.420 --> 00:04:03.640
It has worked surprisingly well in my experience.

00:04:03.640 --> 00:04:11.069
What a microwave oven is doing when using
that feature is analyzing the rise in detected moisture over time.

00:04:11.069 --> 00:04:14.217
More moisture indicates food is beginning to let off steam,

00:04:14.217 --> 00:04:19.712
and depending on how quickly that steam is detected,
it can roughly determine how much food you put in

00:04:19.712 --> 00:04:24.169
(and how cold it was)
and thus how long it needs to heat it for.

00:04:24.169 --> 00:04:27.448
If you’re lucky enough to have a moisture sensor in your microwave,

00:04:27.448 --> 00:04:30.520
you may very well have a decent popcorn button.

00:04:31.129 --> 00:04:35.072
See, unless you’re getting it from Uncle Joe’s Discount Cornhole,

00:04:35.072 --> 00:04:39.400
a bag of microwave popcorn will stay sealed when it begins to pop.

00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:44.194
Since it’s sealed, the moisture sensor can't detect anything at first.

00:04:44.194 --> 00:04:47.695
But once the pressure in the bag builds past a certain point,

00:04:47.695 --> 00:04:50.781
the bag will either go “boof” or possibly

00:04:50.781 --> 00:04:52.290
“pfffft”

00:04:52.290 --> 00:04:54.930
and let out a big ol’ cloud of steam.

00:04:54.930 --> 00:04:56.932
The microwave will easily detect that,

00:04:56.932 --> 00:05:04.066
and by comparing the time it took between the start and the sudden moisture spike with a lookup table built into its programming,

00:05:04.066 --> 00:05:11.311
it will pretty accurately guess the size of the bag it’s popping 
and how long it should keep cooking until it’s done.

00:05:11.311 --> 00:05:18.450
If you’ve got a microwave like this, that popcorn button
might work perfectly for most kinds and sizes of popcorn.

00:05:18.901 --> 00:05:23.254
Notice, though, that I said “might” and “most” -

00:05:23.254 --> 00:05:31.770
this Samsung microwave oven has a pretty decent popcorn button
but the location of its moisture sensor isn’t the best.

00:05:31.770 --> 00:05:33.748
When you use its popcorn function,

00:05:33.748 --> 00:05:40.879
it fires up the fans for a few seconds to clear the air around the moisture sensor before switching on the magnetron.

00:05:40.879 --> 00:05:43.460
After a short delay it begins cooking.

00:05:43.460 --> 00:05:50.786
And you can clearly see that the display doesn’t say anything other than “Popcorn” until shortly after the bag bursts open.

00:05:50.786 --> 00:05:55.150
Then it picks a time remaining value and stops cooking at the end.

00:05:55.150 --> 00:05:56.906
This works pretty well…

00:05:56.906 --> 00:06:02.150
if the opening of the bag is pointing to the right when it bursts open.

00:06:02.150 --> 00:06:05.018
The sensor is clearly somewhere up in here,

00:06:05.018 --> 00:06:08.031
and if the steam gets shot right into this area,

00:06:08.031 --> 00:06:12.079
the microwave only takes a few seconds
to pick a remaining cook time.

00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:15.524
And once it does, it’s usually pretty bang-on.

00:06:15.524 --> 00:06:19.851
But if the popcorn bag was pointing away from this region,

00:06:19.851 --> 00:06:24.423
it tends to take just a little too long to detect the moisture spike,

00:06:24.423 --> 00:06:26.660
so it thinks the bag is bigger than it is,

00:06:26.660 --> 00:06:29.619
and it cooks just a little bit too long.

00:06:29.619 --> 00:06:34.629
Generally it just singes a few kernels,
but it’s enough to be disappointing.

00:06:34.629 --> 00:06:38.121
A faster-spinning turntable would be one potential solution here,

00:06:38.121 --> 00:06:42.754
or perhaps the microwave just isn’t churning up the air inside of it well enough.

00:06:42.754 --> 00:06:46.671
But here’s the thing - despite not being perfect,

00:06:46.671 --> 00:06:49.799
I would still happily press that button.

00:06:49.799 --> 00:06:54.658
Because I’ve dared to use this microwave’s popcorn button and observed its quirks,

00:06:54.658 --> 00:06:57.813
I learned that it beeps when it determines the remaining time,

00:06:57.813 --> 00:07:00.541
which is usually somewhere around 20 or 30 seconds.

00:07:00.541 --> 00:07:01.150
[beep]

00:07:01.150 --> 00:07:05.101
That gets my attention so I get ready to stop the microwave.

00:07:05.101 --> 00:07:11.286
Sometimes I don’t need to stop it early at all,
other times I’ll stop it with 5 or 10 seconds remaining.

00:07:11.286 --> 00:07:14.391
And if I’m popping one of those small snack bags?

00:07:14.391 --> 00:07:16.532
I stop it when it beeps.

00:07:16.532 --> 00:07:21.309
So while its popcorn button isn’t perfect enough to just hit and walk away,

00:07:21.309 --> 00:07:29.661
it does eliminate enough of the guesswork when buying a different brand,
type, flavor, or size of popcorn that I find it extremely useful.

00:07:29.661 --> 00:07:34.230
And I have indeed used microwaves with a perfect popcorn button.

00:07:34.230 --> 00:07:37.160
Like the Sharp Carousel sitting in front of me.

00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:40.037
I made a whole video about this which you can check out if you like,

00:07:40.037 --> 00:07:47.099
and if you’re extremely bored you can also look at the video on my
second channel where I audited its popcorn popping performance.

00:07:47.670 --> 00:07:52.890
A different microwave from my childhood also had a perfect popcorn button.

00:07:52.890 --> 00:07:57.319
Sadly that one didn’t last long at all but it was great while it lasted.

00:07:57.319 --> 00:07:58.878
And, wouldn't ya know it,

00:07:58.878 --> 00:08:04.401
my new microwave oven at home has perhaps
the best popcorn button I’ve ever used -

00:08:04.401 --> 00:08:06.562
but it’s got a twist.

00:08:06.562 --> 00:08:08.594
Actually, two.

00:08:08.594 --> 00:08:13.800
I suspect that this fella has a microphone listening for popping sounds.

00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:18.059
That might sound pretty expensive to implement in a consumer device,

00:08:18.059 --> 00:08:21.504
but remember the video I just made on the Clapper?

00:08:21.504 --> 00:08:24.125
Yeah it’s not exactly groundbreaking technology.

00:08:24.125 --> 00:08:27.709
Every time I have used the popcorn button on this microwave,

00:08:27.709 --> 00:08:35.207
it has run the magnetron until just after
there’s about a two second gap between pops and then it decides

00:08:35.207 --> 00:08:37.079
“ok it’s done!”

00:08:37.079 --> 00:08:43.780
It throws a time remaining on the screen but
you can tell that the magnetron has shut off and it doesn’t restart.

00:08:43.780 --> 00:08:48.675
It has done this and worked perfectly with
different sizes and types of popcorn,

00:08:48.675 --> 00:08:52.745
even a cheesy popcorn which I absolutely regret purchasing.

00:08:52.745 --> 00:08:56.200
But I don’t think I’ve tried a snack-size bag yet.

00:08:56.466 --> 00:08:58.080
How’d that work, future me?

00:08:58.898 --> 00:09:00.123
[munch]

00:09:01.397 --> 00:09:03.273
Went just fine, past me.

00:09:04.585 --> 00:09:06.604
Coulda gone a little longer but it’s not burned.

00:09:08.753 --> 00:09:10.283
Not too many kernels, actually.

00:09:10.797 --> 00:09:12.094
Good job!

00:09:12.094 --> 00:09:19.497
Unfortunately I couldn’t determine concretely
whether this model actually has an acoustic popcorn popping strategy.

00:09:19.497 --> 00:09:23.459
The manual doesn’t mention it and neither does its marketing copy.

00:09:23.459 --> 00:09:27.565
It may be that its steam sensor is just… really good,

00:09:27.565 --> 00:09:33.640
but I mean it’s been way too consistent with the whole
“wait for a two-second pause between pops” thing

00:09:33.640 --> 00:09:35.399
for me to call that a coincidence.

00:09:36.464 --> 00:09:38.055
What’s that?

00:09:38.055 --> 00:09:42.770
There’s a button that says “feature sheet”
under “additional documents?”

00:09:42.770 --> 00:09:45.519
Did I write all that before clicking that button?

00:09:45.519 --> 00:09:50.529
Because it says it features a “Sound-based popcorn function.” right there.

00:09:50.529 --> 00:09:52.050
So it is real.

00:09:52.050 --> 00:09:53.459
Good to know.

00:09:53.459 --> 00:09:59.459
The other twist with this microwave, though,
is that it doesn’t appear to cook popcorn at full power.

00:09:59.459 --> 00:10:02.897
It takes noticeably longer than the Samsung machine does,

00:10:02.897 --> 00:10:05.477
and indeed most microwaves I’ve ever used.

00:10:06.010 --> 00:10:10.220
But - it doesn’t have an inverter magnetron and I don’t hear it cycling

00:10:10.220 --> 00:10:16.254
so unless it’s got some sort of half-wave rectified 50% power mode
I don’t know what the heck it’s doing.

00:10:16.539 --> 00:10:18.640
You don’t need to know what any of that means.

00:10:18.640 --> 00:10:25.540
This microwave is also weirdly slow at melting butter for some reason,
but not at heating things in general.

00:10:25.977 --> 00:10:29.385
That’s actually been something of a minor mystery
that I’m still puzzled by so

00:10:29.385 --> 00:10:33.458
I’m honestly not sure if the slow popcorn popping is intentional

00:10:33.458 --> 00:10:38.709
but by golly it nails it every time
so it’s definitely worth the small added wait.

00:10:39.034 --> 00:10:39.709
So.

00:10:39.709 --> 00:10:42.566
I’ve technically shown you three microwaves in this video:

00:10:42.566 --> 00:10:44.662
this Sharp from the late ‘90s.

00:10:44.662 --> 00:10:47.079
The Samsung from around 2010.

00:10:47.079 --> 00:10:49.853
And the KitchenAid from just last year.

00:10:49.853 --> 00:10:59.300
All of them have perfectly functional popcorn buttons that work great,
well-enough-to-be-useful if not perfect, and fantastic respectively.

00:10:59.300 --> 00:11:01.393
And the only way I found that out

00:11:01.393 --> 00:11:04.310
was by daring to use the popcorn button.

00:11:04.976 --> 00:11:08.116
Uncle Orville may not want us to press the button

00:11:08.116 --> 00:11:11.173
but that’s only out of fear of the unknown.

00:11:11.173 --> 00:11:17.230
Orville can’t tell what microwave you’ve got 
and he’s just giving advice for the lowest common denominator.

00:11:17.230 --> 00:11:20.184
But you know what kind of microwave you have!

00:11:20.184 --> 00:11:23.337
Or, if you don’t yet, you can surely find out.

00:11:23.337 --> 00:11:25.859
All it takes is a press of a button!

00:11:25.859 --> 00:11:29.419
At most you’ll waste a bag of popcorn, but even then -

00:11:29.419 --> 00:11:34.436
if you just watch it as it does its thing,
you can stop it yourself if it’s going on too long

00:11:34.436 --> 00:11:37.493
or start it again if it stopped too soon.

00:11:37.493 --> 00:11:40.467
You’re smart enough to figure that out, and you should!

00:11:40.467 --> 00:11:44.405
Honestly you should check out all the features your microwave has.

00:11:44.405 --> 00:11:47.052
Sure, many of them are clunky to access

00:11:47.052 --> 00:11:53.535
(a high-res dot matrix display and actual user interface
could really help with that but that ship has sailed apparently).

00:11:53.535 --> 00:12:00.094
And while they’re often of dubious usefulness,
at least one or two of them might be great!

00:12:00.094 --> 00:12:06.097
I use the sensor reheat function all the time to take the guesswork out of leftovers.

00:12:06.097 --> 00:12:12.790
I just wish Samsung wouldn’t make me pick between 
Casserole, Dinner Plate, and Pasta

00:12:12.790 --> 00:12:14.785
- what does that even mean?

00:12:14.785 --> 00:12:19.315
And who knows, if you didn’t buy the microwave
oven you have at home yourself,

00:12:19.315 --> 00:12:22.843
it might have some tricks up its sleeve
you didn’t know about.

00:12:22.843 --> 00:12:27.169
This over-the-range microwave
can actually be a convection oven!

00:12:27.169 --> 00:12:30.352
It’s got resistive heating elements
in addition to the magnetron

00:12:30.352 --> 00:12:34.543
and will get its insides up to 450 degrees if you like.

00:12:34.543 --> 00:12:37.719
Apparently the new model even does air frying.

00:12:37.719 --> 00:12:39.343
Of course it does.

00:12:40.332 --> 00:12:42.935
Am I ever going to get around to talking about
air fryers?

00:12:43.810 --> 00:12:46.418
♫ steamingly smooth jazz ♫

00:12:47.426 --> 00:12:52.135
Whaddya suppose the difference is between
buttery kettle corn and regular kettle corn?

00:12:52.135 --> 00:12:54.730
I dunno but I bought this cause I wanna find out.

00:12:54.730 --> 00:12:59.370
One way to tell whether you have that sensor
is if your microwave offersh [annoyed flub fliby sounds]

00:12:59.370 --> 00:13:02.240
The moisture sensor doesn’t detect anything at first.

00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:03.240
Ahh…

00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:04.031
what?

00:13:04.031 --> 00:13:06.110
See, unless you’re getting it from Uncle…

00:13:06.110 --> 00:13:07.110
why?

00:13:07.110 --> 00:13:08.110
Hmm.

00:13:08.110 --> 00:13:11.767
It can pretty accurately guess the size of
the bag it’s popking.

00:13:11.767 --> 00:13:12.767
Popking?

00:13:14.175 --> 00:13:14.860
Oh boy!

00:13:14.860 --> 00:13:20.330
Popcorn button might work perfekly for most
kinds and sizes of popcorn.

00:13:20.330 --> 00:13:22.407
Why did perfectly get…

00:13:23.130 --> 00:13:24.062
PAHPCORN

00:13:24.062 --> 00:13:27.665
Which is usually somewhere around 20 or 30 secods.

00:13:27.665 --> 00:13:30.000
Why did I say seconds like that?

00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.011
I dunno, but I’m starting over.

00:13:45.753 --> 00:13:47.753
 

00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:50.510
PAHPCORN