Saturday, May 14, 2011

Great American Popcorn Co.

The Great American Popcorn Company (Galena, IL) is an establishment selling gourmet popcorn, Jelly Belly jelly beans, homemade fudge, candies, and coffee. My friends know I love spicy food (perhaps too much) and popcorn, and one of them alerted me to Great American's website.

To my delight, Great American has a lot of different flavors of gourmet popcorn to choose from. I ordered a bag of their two spiciest flavors: Freaking Hot and Hellfire & Damnation.

"Freaking Hot" popcorn
"Hellfire & Damnation" popcorn
Hellfire & Damnation has a blend of habanero, cayenne, jalapeno, and other spices. I detected some cheese in the blend as well. So it's really cheesy popcorn with a bunch of heat on it. Freaking Hot is the same thing, but now Great American adds the ghost pepper in it. I could tell Freaking Hot was spicier, but not overly spicy.

On several occasions when I ate the popcorn, I coughed from the chili powders hitting the back of my throat. I welcome such a reaction. It tells me the spice is present and  that I paid for a product that delivered -- literally and figuratively (I ordered from their online store and it was shipped to me).

I am a big fan of their Freaking Hot popcorn and will order that again. I really only tried the Hellfire & Damnation to compare heat levels. I am also intrigued by their sweeter flavors and will try those in the future as well. Great American Popcorn Company has a great popcorn product and lives up to its name. 7.25/10


UPDATE (5/17/11): I have increased the rating for Great American Popcorn Company a quarter point to 7.25. The previous week, I emailed David Lewis, the owner of Great American Popcorn, suggesting some smaller sizes or a sampler popcorn package, just in case people ordering from out-of-state wanted to try numerous flavors and could not make up their minds. Mr. Lewis replied back on 5/17, saying they were about to start offering smaller size containers. He also stated that if I let him know I was ordering again from Great American Popcorn, he would be happy to throw in a few popcorn samples. Now that's a nice guy for ya.

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