The secret ingredient is in almost every bucket of movie theater popcorn. Manufactured by Gold Medal, Flavacol is the “secret sauce” most movie theaters use in order to produce that popcorn flavor only found in cinemas, stadiums, etc.
Flavacol is a
butter-flavored, popcorn seasoning salt made of extra fine salt
flakes. The product is made of four ingredients: salt,
artificial butter flavor, and Yellow #5 and Yellow #6. The
latter are what give movie theater-style popcorn that signature
yellow color.
As MTV explains, “Flavacol is used by theaters when cooking the popcorn, not as a topping; it is basically salt with other stuff to give the popcorn that movie theater flavor and color.” It gets added during popping to give popcorn the yellow buttery color. It is essentially just a super-fine salt with some coloring agents. Flavacol contains a proprietary diacetyl-free butter flavoring.
I get mine on Amazon and it is good, but very salty. You can also use in on top of popped popcorn. Start easy, little goes a long way.