Mom’s Basic Bootcamp: Corn

Until recently I took corn for granted.  I kept a can or two on hand to serve as an emergency vegetable but seldom actually did so.  Occasionally I’d buy a box of frozen corn and then forget it was in the freezer.

I have always favored fresh corn.  It reminds me of summers in Western Pennsylvania.  My father was a big corn lover, and being in a semi-rural area we often bought a dozen ears from a roadside stand and ate them all in one sitting.

Back in those days
I remember hearing that if you didn’t eat freshly picked corn within six hours, it would be tough.  I never figured out if that was true.  To unsophisticated me, corn tasted like corn.  Since then food engineers have researched how to control corn’s sweetness, so today almost all ears of corn taste good for at least a few days.

I try to cook corn the day I buy it, although I don’t always succeed.

But whenever I do cook it, I strip off the husks and silks and boil the cobs for no more than 2 minutes.  I tried microwaving but had a bad result.  Cooking a dozen ears of corn in the microwave sounds like pure torture.

And I definitely did not follow the lead of my friend, who insisted that corn needs to boil for 45 minutes. 

Some people boil corn with the husks still on, stripping them away when the corn is ready to heat.  That’s too messy for me.

Leftover cooked corn on the cob can be heated in a dry frying pan for a few minutes per side, allowing some of the kernels to turn brown.  Or cut the kernels off and add them to soups, stews, salads, salsa, fritters, stuffing, cooked rice or homemade cornbread. 

One day I sawed straight through the uncooked cob with a bread knife to cut 1-inch circles.  I threaded them onto a skewer, along with other vegetables, and grilled them for a few minutes.  Another time I tossed those corn circles in with other vegetables I was roasting.  The effect was highly dramatic. 

Fun fact: an average ear of corn contains about 800 kernels.  Who would have guessed?

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