Puff grain cannon for home made breakfast cereals

I wanted to share an unsatisfied curiosity to learn how to make my own healthy breakfast grain cereals from my own farm grown grains. It costs 4 dollars on average for a box of cereal and I would guess there is 15-40 cents worth of product before preparation. The cost of shipping the stuff is a chunk of the price but this itch led me to do some researching on a whole grain puffer machine. I have seen many industrial items but this one is by far my favorite and is a particularly good quality design!





The title of the video is misleading when you consider that this pressurized cannon can puff rice (Rice Krispies), barley (Golden Puffs), quinoa, wild rice or any other grain. I have not been able to locate these in the U.S. so I may look into manufacturing my own someday in the future hopefully

It will make puffed rice but not rice krispies. They are made from rice flour, sugar etc.

Look for an importer of Chinese antiquities. Puffers were very common in recent history.

Super! Another way to value-add to the small grain crops! Please let us know if you find a decent source, I'm busy looking too. I'm not sure I would want to be standing within a hundred yards of an 'antiquity' with that much pressure and steel, but maybe....

Hey Dale, your absolutely right about the Rice Krispies (just looked at the box). I cant find quality suppliers because the ones made in china are really cheap junk. The model in this video is very well designed with a casing which improves contact with the heat below. Others get cold spots and take longer to heat.

Neato! Also following this thread with interest.

The video is really cool and the POOF is very exciting. But I wonder, could one do this in a presure cooker? you probably would not want to just release the lid but it seems like what you are after is building up heat and presure and then dumping the presure all at once while maintaining the heat. Perhaps the safety valve on the presure cooker would not release presure fast enough though. I don't know.

Attempting to do this with a pressure cooker would be very dangerous. The pressure release would have to be immediate for efficient "puffness" because the water inside the grain needs to rapidly expand to a super heated vapor. I believe the cannon is not only a novelty but a safer method to rapidly expand the grains directing the energy from the pressure release towards one direction. Besides, I bet one of these things would be a huge hit with parties!

Found this guy who demonstrates making cakes from the puffed rice flavoring it with dry spices and using heated caramel as a bonding agent which cools to hold form. This man was very generous to share his trade knowledge.



This video has basic instructions in the procedures of making puffed grains. I am guessing this is an advertisement for their puffer but the design is very large, bulky and inefficient compared to the first video in the thread which can produce a better ratio of puffed grain when compared to size. There is so much food wise I would love to do with this thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMhtIjZ4IBE

This is a video of rice puffed in slow motion, very entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoMQm2WGM9Q&feature=related

Dale Hodgins wrote:It will make puffed rice but not rice krispies. They are made from rice flour, sugar etc.

Look for an importer of Chinese antiquities. Puffers were very common in recent history.

Don't look for an importer of Chinese antiquities.

I had encountered one of those puffers in Shanghai (but I had been warned that the local product had lead problems) and I was Googling to see if one could be had here in the US.

In doing so I learned that the Chinese machines are inherently flawed--there is a piece of lead in them that is in contact with the food.

http://www.solucionespracticas.org.pe/td/pdf/food_chain_31.pdf

(Don't let the URL scare you, it's in English.)

Thanks for the link.

Nice But cant see

On a different tack entirely, if you are looking for healthy breakfast cereals, have you considered soaked, fermented or sprouted grains? They are more easily digested and more nutritious than grains which are simply dried or cooked straight away. I make kishk, which I usually use to cook with but can also be eaten as a breakfast cereal. You start with bulgar wheat (or sometimes buckwheat) but I think you could use other stuff, you just need to experiment. You soak it in buttermilk or another cultured dairy product for about 24 hours (you add enough so that it makes a sort of stiff dough), then you spread it thin on trays and dry it either in a very low oven, food dehydrator, or the sun if you are lucky! Then you seal it in an airtight container. You can eat it as a cold breakfast cereal by adding milk, you can cook it like porridge, or you can add it into savoury recipes like soups and stews.

I have set the watch button on this thread and will be looking for any updates on this subject ! I find that giving kids Any chance at all in helping to prepare foods
that they are going to eat gives them Ownership, and they will then at least try the 'dish' !

Can you imagine the wide open delight in actually watching the expanded cereal shoot forth, pouring on their own milk and - - - - Big AL

According to what I am reading, the original experiment that worked was done with a cannon. Now, I tend to draw the line at making my food with something that recreates a cannon, you better have a deep understanding of metal fatigue is all I can say if you are going to be doing this... then again, I don't like pressure cookers, either. :

Somethings might not be for anyone who isn't a professional, just saying. Whatever you do, don't go cheap if you are dealing with pressures like this.

One thing that has helped me a lot to adapt to a simpler way of life is not feel I have to have food certain ways, if I don't want to buy processed cerals, I just don't buy them. I tend to only eat fruit for carbs, anyway, and yucca, and other root crops that grow here. I used to eat potatoes, which are cheap at the farmers market, but recently I stopped that, since yucca taste very good to me, and is free from my garden and produces all year. Potatoes won't grow easily here at our altitude. But I have lots of things to eat for starch, so why struggle?

I used to adore peaches in the USA, no peaches worth anything. But there are mangos that taste very much like a peach, and are pretty much year round here, whereas peaches have a fairly short season in the states.

And there are foods here I love, but won't eat in the USA, like papaya. Fresh papaya off a tree has no relationship to papaya bought in Northern grocery stores, since it was shipped green. Part of my transition to enjoying life here was switching over to eating only local foods, except for an occasional treat.

I do like puffed wheat, without a question, but I can't see having a cannon in my home, just to have puffed wheat, better to grind it and make homemade bread in my opinion. I don't think most kinds would turn their noses up at homemade bread....

And as I recall, if you find the right places, you can buy puffed wheat VERY cheaply by the sack. Still expensive, but then again, heating up a cannon probably isn't all that cheap either.

Puffed rice is popular in Bangladesh. I'm told that this is how they do it there:
In a big skillet or pot with tight cover, heat clean, dry sand until very hot.
Then the grain to be puffed is stirred in quickly, the pot covered briefly until the puffing slows.
Then the grain is scooped out with a wire strainer and shaken clean of any sand.

Thats gotta be a pretty tight cover, interesting non the less. I would not mind to see a video floating on youtube showcasing this technique.

Why so tight? Well fitted, such as would be adequate to pop corn and retain it in a saucepan ought to work. You could hold the lid on and shake the pan to keep it from burning.
Or you could use a screw-down pressure cooker. But this would not give you as much control.

In order to puff the grain there has to be an increase in pressure initially when heated and then a dramatic drop in pressure to cause the water to instantly vaporize and expand. Some grains however can do this without the pressurized container because of the skin which is what I think you are referring to.

I just assumed that if this trick worked the rice grains had not yet been 'Hulled' !?!, The splitting of the hulls causing sudden pressure drop, just like Popcorn !
The sand would help remove the husks after puffing ! I will follow this with interest ! Big Al

Perhaps so. Puffed rice cakes are usually rather brown and reticulated in the grain, no?

I recently was revisiting this subject due to tangible reminders from a bowl of cereal in my hand. Though not a "puff" variety breakfast cereal, I found a good link from this blog of a bran recipe:

http://willowbirdbaking.com/2010/08/11/48-homemade-breakfast-cereals/

website wrote:
Homemade Nutty Bran Flakes

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:
1/2 cup bran
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup almond flour (or other finely ground nuts)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water

I have not tried this at the moment but when I have some time I will. The reviews were highly positive. The recipe itself was copies from this link where dozens of other breakfast cereal recipes are located.

http://www.mrbreakfast.com/recipe_collection.asp?subcategoryid=8

Jicky Jones wrote:Why so tight? Well fitted, such as would be adequate to pop corn and retain it in a saucepan ought to work. You could hold the lid on and shake the pan to keep it from burning.
Or you could use a screw-down pressure cooker. But this would not give you as much control.

The point is to raise the boiling point of water to instantly boil the water when the pressure is released. The time I saw it being done the pressure gauge was up to several atmospheres. (I wasn't paying much attention to the gauge so I don't know how many.) I doubt an elephant standing on the lid could hold the pressure. This is a lot higher than a typical pressure cooker.


Edit: I did some more snooping trying to find the pressure and I find some guys doing it on a small scale:

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-01/vise-cakes-making-grain-puffer-cheap-hosts-food-jammers

They were using 11 atmospheres.

Bump....

Was looking into this again today and found an awesome demonstration by Myth Busters.

Amedean Messan wrote:Bump....

Was looking into this again today and found an awesome demonstration by Myth Busters.

That is almost exactly the device I saw in Shanghai. The one over there had an easier-to-use crank to keep it turning, they weren't turning that one enough and burned the popcorn a bit.


And, Hassan Emrauni, you're right, the link I posted before seems to be dead.

So has anyone found a place to buy a puff cannon? Or can anyone tell me the native name of the device so that I can locate one?

I did find this video of a homemade puffer cannon.

Wow this is a super old thread! But now that Alibaba exists we can finally satisfy our desires for weird machines!

This is what you're looking for:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-5KG-TIME-China-Cannon-Corn_1600294683794.html?spm=a2756.order-detail-ta-bn-b.0.0.763d2fc2QIXnir
There's cheaper versions, but I felt like the price on this one was a good middle ground. I'm against the idea that "made in China" means cheap/dangerous, but it is true that if something does go wrong I have basically no recourse against a random company in China.

So I ordered one of these back on December 28 2021. It came yesterday, and was in great condition, fresh from the factory!
I did a few runs of popcorn in it yesterday to test it out, and by the fourth I was getting popped corn!

There are three variables to watch as you run it:
first is the temperature of the cannon when you put fresh corn in - you want it preheated, or it takes too long to build pressure, and your corn burns in the meantime.
Second is the pressure - I got good results at 0.8 Mpa, but each grain is different. The guy with the homemade thing brought it up to 160 psi (0.8 Mpa is ~116 psi) which seems crazy to me, but his popcorn did look really dark in the last couple frames before the video ended.
Third is how much flame you have - even when properly preheated, my flame was a little low so it took a long time to build pressure and the corn came out pretty dark. I think overall the faster you can build to pressure the better, as that means hot corn that hasn't burned yet.

Regarding safety, I'm not the safest person around, but I felt pretty good about the product I received. It's a heavy-duty cast iron cannon, about a half inch thick for the majority of the vessel. The pressure gauge end has a few little pinholes drilled in it for the gauge, and the lid end is has a thicker lip on it that's milled smooth for the silicone seal to press against. I didn't see any voids anywhere in the casting, it looks really good! It was a little rusty when I got it from travel probably, but I rubbed it down in oil and it's looking nice now. I've seen a few people use these, and instead of using the pipe to lever it open, bash the trigger with a sledgehammer. I advise against this, since that's a pretty hard impact and might snap that trigger pin off if you whack it too hard. The pipe they provided is too short to get enough leverage, so I was bonking mine open with a length of 2x4. Wood is just less likely to snap a metal pin like that.

Feel free to ask anything else about it, and I'll post detailed pictures if anyone wants. :)

I recently ordered one of these myself and I'm wondering if anyone knows the appropriate pressure for each grain. Does anyone put in salt/seasoning or any type of liquid?

I recently got a very small stainless one off Amazon and it came with this pressure chart
Corn  9-10 kg/cm sq
Rice  10-12 kg/cm sq
Wheat, oats, barley 10-11 kg/cm sq
Rice cakes, shrimp chips, noodles 6-8 kg/cm sq
Walnuts, sunflower seeds 5kg/ cm sq

So far I have tried the rice and wheat with very good results
Made a puffed wheat cereal with hunny and cinnamon heated till it formad a hard ball when dropped in ice water in one pot and heated the puffed wheat in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes in a roaster pan then poured the hunny mix over it stirring until it cooled and stopped sticking to itself

R Schoenbeck wrote:I recently got a very small stainless one off Amazon and it came with this pressure chart
Corn  9-10 kg/cm sq
Rice  10-12 kg/cm sq
Wheat, oats, barley 10-11 kg/cm sq
Rice cakes, shrimp chips, noodles 6-8 kg/cm sq
Walnuts, sunflower seeds 5kg/ cm sq

So far I have tried the rice and wheat with very good results
Made a puffed wheat cereal with hunny and cinnamon heated till it formad a hard ball when dropped in ice water in one pot and heated the puffed wheat in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes in a roaster pan then poured the hunny mix over it stirring until it cooled and stopped sticking to itself

Just a quick update I have found hard red winter wheat with a smidge of water pops much better than soft white and im using this to pop it on amazon ZZYYZZ Hot Air Popcorn Machine,... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C7GNGHYF?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share