Pop Quiz: How Would You Rate the Kettle Corn Stands?

For many years, on my way home from the fair I’d always stop in Heritage Square and buy a big bag of kettle corn to take home to the kids. And for myself. The kettle resided under a tent, and sweating workers would add dollops of sugar and salt, creating a taste sensation different from the plain popcorn or caramel corn or cheese corn we’re used to in those days. And for a long time, the only place I could buy kettle corn was at the fair.

But over the years, kettle corn has merged into the mainstream, and we see it at festivals, mall parking lots, even in the supermarket’s microwave popcorn aisle.

MOREThe original Heritage Square kettle corn guy in the tent is gone, replaced a few years ago by another kettle corner, in the same spot but in a wooden stand. There’s also a second, unrelated kettle corn maker in the North Woods area of the fair, near Ron Schara’s building.

I bought a bag from each.

The Heritage Square (HS) stand sells a$2 small paper bag size and a $5 size in a plastic bag. North Woods (NW) has a large for $4 and giant for $6.

The HS $4 bag is taller and the $5 NW is fatter, but to the untrained eye they appear to each contain roughly the same amount. (And my expense budget does not have a line item for weights and measures.)

HS uses corn oil; NW uses soy oil. Workers at each place claimed theirs is best.

Two of our three unaffiliated taste testers liked the HS kettle corn the best, saying it had more sweet and more salty tastes. More intense, maybe. The other taster liked NW, finding it more pleasing to the palate. All of us, it should be noted, have been eating fair food for eight days and may by now be taste bud challenged.

So that’s my kernel of consumer information for the day.

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