How To Make Popcorn?

How much popcorn does it take to grind to make 1 cup of cornmeal?

• I want to buy some popcorn to make my family homemade cornbread, but don't know how much popcorn to grind for 1 cup cornmeal. I would like to know ahead of time to make sure I get enough for many batches, but need to have a way to calculate that.

• Answer:

  Why don't you just start with about a cup and a half of popcorn and grind it to the consistency that you want, fine, coarse or somewhere in between, and then measure to see how much you have. Aside from asking your friends, this is really the only way to know for sure. The size of the kernels of corn makes a difference, and the coarseness of the grind matters so it will be trial and error on your part. What type of grinder are you using? I would like to try this. I've seen popcorn cornmeal advertised before but have never used it. Edit: I looked in the whole grains book that came with my Vitamix blender that has a dry blade and container for grinding whole grains, and it says that grains increase about 25% in volume when ground into FLOUR. Using 1 1/2 cups as I said earlier would be almost 2 cups (1 7/8 cups) of flour. So I would imagine meal would be less than that amount.