Many popcorn lovers go to the movies just to eat great tasting popcorn, but only a few know that you can get that delicious movie popcorn taste at home as well.

The best home popcorn machine for this is a Whirley Pop Popcorn Maker, which is a stovetop popcorn popper. It consists of an aluminum pan with a clip on lid, that has a stay-cool handle you rotate while popping, which turns a stirring metal rod inside of your Whirley Pop Popcorn Popper. This stirring system keeps the kernels in motion across the bottom of the Whirley Pop's pan, distributing oil and heat evenly. The steam vents on top of the Whirley Popcorn Maker lets moisture escape.

First things first, you have to decide how much popcorn you'll want to pop and prepare the ingredients based on the following:

Quarts of Popcorn | Amount of Oil | Amount of Popping Corn

2 |1 tablespoon | 1/3 Cup

4 |2 tablespoon | 2/3 Cup

6 |2 tablespoons | 1 Cup

8 |3 tablespoons | 1 1/4 Cups

And follow the following steps:

1. There is no need to preheat the popper or the oil.

2. Mix the required oil and amount of corn in your Whirley Pop Popper and place it onto your stove (either gas or electric) and turn the stove to medium. At this stage you don't need to add any seasoning, just the corn and oil.

3. Slowly and consistently turn the crank, and adjust the stove temperature so popping is finished in about 3 minutes.

4. Rotate the lever during the entire cooking process until there is only an seldom pop of about 1 every 3-4 seconds.

5. Take the popcorn popper off the stove immediately.

6. Pour the popcorn into a serving bowl.

7. Sprinkle with butter, salt or popcorn seasoning and enjoy!

Whirley Pop Popcorn Popping Tips

* If you set the heat too high, you will burn your popcorn! Medium heat is the way to go!

* 1-2 tablespoons of oil is enough, drenching it in oil will ruin the popcorn.

* Use quality corn.

And there you have it! Its time to enjoy your home made move popcorn, all it takes is a couple minutes of preparation. And the good news is that popcorn made with your Whirley Pop Popper will be much healthier than movie theater popcorn, because they add lots of "secret" ingredients to their recipes, which generally consist of artificial ingredients.

For those of you who are even more concerned about healt, you might want to try an air popper. It uses hot air to pop the corn instead of hot oil, and will result in a virtually zero calorie popcorn snack. It won't have the same taste though, however, you can still add some home prepares seasoning and sprinkle it on, or even some butter at the end. As you might guess, the butter increases the calorie count of the snack. Generally speaking air popped popcorn has 31-55 calories in one cup of popped popcorn, which increases to 133 calories when lightly buttered.