It's Poppin'
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
My name is Janelle Doyle. I am the owner of It’s Poppin’ Gourmet Kettle Corn, and we are a gourmet kettle corn company with over 60 delicious flavors.
A dish or recipe from my family that immediately brings me back to childhood is barbecue. We used to have big barbecues on holidays—Fourth of July, Juneteenth, Labor Day—and it would bring all of our family together, family that maybe we hadn’t seen in a while. We would meet up at someone’s house, maybe an uncle or auntie, or my grandparents when they were still alive. Everyone would meet up at the house, and we would barbecue and have all types of delicious sides with the barbecue. Just smelling that charcoal grill really brings back awesome memories of family.
The dish that I’m preparing for this art installation is our Carolina barbecue flavor popcorn. The reason why we chose this flavor is because I’m not born and raised in North Carolina. We actually moved here 10 years ago, but when I was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we would always have these big barbecues. We would have family come over, and my uncle would always make his signature barbecue sauce. I’m not 100% sure what exactly he would put in his signature barbecue sauce, but it was really sweet and kind of tangy. We are trying to mimic that flavor in our barbecue sauce.
It traces back to North Carolina because I do know that North Carolina has—one side of the state has their own recipes, the other side of the state has their version of barbecue. So us merging those two, and even thinking about the sauces and the taste of it when I would have it with my family, we decided to utilize the Carolina barbecue because it brings me back and it’s a good taste of the Carolinas.
Where I first got connected with food via the kitchen was in my grandmother’s kitchen. My grandmother’s kitchen was older. She had these porcelain countertops and this old‑school gas stove, and I remember these big pots being on the stove and her cooking. Even my uncle would come in when we were barbecuing and he would make his sauce in these giant stainless‑steel pots. I remember the smells of the food cooking, being able to smell that barbecue sauce that I knew was going to go on those ribs that I couldn’t wait to eat. The environment felt so homey and so family. I can picture that kitchen in my mind to this day with those countertops and those light blue walls. It really reminded me of home.
Have I ever tried to mimic the Carolina barbecue recipe that my uncle made famous? The answer is yes. I have tried to mimic his barbecue recipe, and it did not turn out exactly the way I remembered it growing up in childhood. So I tweaked it. I tried to do what I could—add something else, take something away—trying to see if I could get that recipe exactly the way I remember it. I think I got extremely close, but I’m probably missing one thing. There’s one thing that I don’t know. But I definitely think I was able to create a good duplicate that I love, my family loves, and we enjoy. I got pretty close, but he would have to be here to give me that one final ingredient that I think I may be missing.
This particular Carolina barbecue recipe has stayed important to me because it brings back such great memories of being in the kitchen, being around family, being around people that love and care for you. Even though you don’t see them every day, we could really connect in the kitchen and connect around food. Connecting to something as simple as a barbecue sauce brings back those memories and those good, kind‑hearted family feelings. I wanted to make sure that if I chose any recipe to utilize for my popcorn, I wanted something that would connect me back to home—something that I knew would taste good not just on the ribs we were making all the time, but on popcorn as well. I chose the Carolina barbecue to be that flavor, and it hasn’t let me down since.
The Carolina barbecue recipe influenced how I cook today because I make sure that I cook with love, and I’m tasting my cooking as I go along. I would always notice that my family wouldn’t just cook something and leave it. It was constantly tasting. It was adding a little bit of this or, “Oh, I forgot to add that,” and you could taste it in the recipe while they were cooking. I do that as well. I’m constantly making sure that I’m tasting my food or tasting my sauce until I have it right. Once I do have it right, that’s the only time we serve it to the family. Making sure we’re tasting as we go to make sure it’s right is something I learned from my family and something I would always see people making this recipe do every time.
If someone was trying to cook this recipe of mine years from now, I would hope they understand that this is going to take some time. This is not something that’s going to come out correctly in a quick couple‑minute process, or something you want to use a bunch of store‑bought ingredients for. You really have to take your time, be patient, and make sure you’re doing it right. It’s nothing you can think will be done in a few minutes and turn out good, because it will not turn out right. You want to be careful, take your time, and really follow directions and the recipe to get it right.
If I had the opportunity to sit down with my uncle and cook this recipe for him, I would definitely tell him that this barbecue sauce was inspired by him. I remember growing up, even as a kid, him making this and putting that sauce on my burger or on my ribs and asking me, “Do you like it? Is it good? Is it delicious?” And it always was. I would hope that if I got the chance to make this recipe for him, he would know how much love I put into it and that he would agree that I got it probably almost right. He’s not going to give me 100%. He might give me 99. But I do feel he would be very proud of me. He would be proud of the recipe, and he would hope that I pass this down to my son and their kids, and that it lives on forever.
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