Dipping your hand into a bag of kettle corn is like playing roulette with your taste buds: It’s hard to know which flavor you’ll fish out first. One bite delivers salt, the next a sweet shellac of caramelized sugar, and another piece is so fluffy it squeaks on your teeth. No matter what you get, one thing is certain: The sweet-salty, fluffy-crunchy schizophrenia of kettle corn is so addictive, we might as well call it kettle crack.

Angelenos looking for a fix would do well to track down Frontier Kettle Corn, the city’s kernel kingpin. The family-owned operation seems to have a lock on the network of farmers markets. Frontier booths are everywhere from Westwood and Culver City to Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Manhattan Beach and beyond. On a recent Sunday we spoke with Robert Aranda—an eight-year kettle chef and nephew to Frontier owner Jack White (no White Stripes relation, sorry)—at the Hollywood market as he donned his Plexiglas mask and popped up a fresh batch.

The perfect pop requires ideal conditions inside the kettle. The large black drum runs on propane, and weather conditions—both ambient temperature and humidity—can affect the gas pressure. Aranda fine-tunes the pressure accordingly to achieve just the right temperature. He doesn’t reveal what that is, he just knows by experience. If heat levels run too high, kernels will prematurely rupture; too low and you get something resembling the sad collection that sits at the bottom of every microwave bag.

Aranda pours about 3 cups of soybean oil into the vat. Soybean contains no cholesterol or trans fats, and it can be eaten by those who keep kosher or have nut allergies. Just as the oil steams (and before it begins to burn), he dumps in 4 pounds of Weaver Gold kernels, an Indiana brand known for its high expansion ratio. In other words, each kernel pops big.

And then Aranda stirs as if his life depends on it. “You don’t stir right, you lose the bet,” he says. Actually, you’re up a creek without a paddle: His stirring tool is a modified wooden boat oar, one custom-made by his uncle expressly for this purpose. Aranda is grateful for a wooden instrument, as metal stirrers transfer heat. He’s got enough of that, what with sizzling oil and scalding steam constantly coming at him. That Plexiglas mask is going nowhere.

Frantic stirring ensures that the kernels will pop without burning. “When a few start lazily popping,” Aranda says, “then you start adding the sugar.” He unloads what appears to be about 3 cups of cane sugar into the kettle and whisks it all vigorously, giving the popped kernels their haphazard coating of sweetness. The whole process, he estimates, “takes about 2 minutes and 47 seconds.” (Sounds pretty precise to us.) In that window of opportunity when no errant unpopped kernels are left but no popped kernels have yet burnt, Aranda transfers the batch to the cooling bin and shakes on some salt. It shouldn’t be an overpowering dose, “just a touch right at the very end,” he says. An ideal batch will never be as salty as the stuff at movie theaters or as cloying as caramel corn.

As soon as he finishes, it’s as if someone rang the dinner bell. A line instantly appears at the booth, full of patrons eager to get their hands on popcorn so fresh, it leaves traces of warm oil on its white paper sack. Kettle corn is one of those things that just doesn’t keep well. No problem, we’ll eat it all now.

Rachel Levin is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.