Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 250 degrees F, Grease a large (but shallow) roasting/cookie pan with butter or cooking spray. Set aside a large bowl and spray that with cooking spray as well. Put your popcorn into the greased bowl.
In a 2 quart saucepan, combine brown sugar, corn syrup, butter, and salt. Whisk over medium heat until it begins to boil. Allow to boil over medium heat (without stirring!!) for about 5 minutes. The mixture will be deep gold and bubbling.
Remove from the heat and immediately stir in the baking soda. The mixture will foam and froth. That’s ok. Keep stirring. Stir in the vanilla extract.
Quickly pour warm caramel syrup over the popcorn in your greased bowl. Use two large spoons to toss the mixture, coating all of the popcorn in caramel. Work as quickly as you can as it will cool quickly. Transfer coated mixture onto your greased roasting/cookie pan.
Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove and toss. Return to the oven to bake for another 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and toss. Sprinkle with a little more salt; about a 1/2 teaspoon should do. Allow to cool before handling and packaging.
Caramel corn will last up to 4 days well wrapped at room temperature.
Optional: You can add things like peanuts, M&M's, cut up candy bar, broken up pretzel bits, etc. to your popcorn before pouring on the caramel; just substitute out each cup of popcorn for a cup of your add-on. For instance, if you want to add one cup of peanuts, use one cup less of popcorn. You can see our salted pretzel snickers caramel corn right here and our peanut M&M caramel corn on this EPIC holiday dessert buffet here.
Cuisine dessert, snack
Recipe by Glitter, Inc. at https://glitterinc.com/salted-vanilla-caramel-corn-popcorn/