Silvia’s corn yesterday at the Harvard market was good again. It was slightly less sweet than last week’s, but that may just be a variation by ear. This corn needs (if at all) a minute or two in boiling water (mainly to get it hot enough to butter). It comes out beautifully crisp and, as I said, sweet. Still small kernels, though.
The way I was taught to cook corn on the cob back when I was a grad student at U Illinois Champaign-Urbana was to bring to boil barely an inch or so of water, drop in corn for ~3 minutes, stacking up as many cobs as you want (perhaps bring the water up if there are a lot of cobs or steam in several batches). The corn steams instead of being submerged in boiling water. It has been my go-to method ever since. Works for crab, lobster, and other mollusks, so why not corn, too?
Incidentally, I do the same with dried pasta, using way less than everyone has been taught to do…it saves water and the results are the same. (Maybe I read this tip on Serious Eats?)
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[quote=“digga, post:22, topic:10284”]
The way I was taught to cook corn on the cob back when I was a grad student at U Illinois Champaign-Urbana was to bring to boil barely an inch or so of water, drop in corn for ~3 minutes, stacking up as many cobs as you want (perhaps bring the water up if there are a lot of cobs or steam in several batches). The corn steams instead of being submerged in boiling water.[/quote]
I will have to give this method a shot.
A method I have been cooking corn more and more is to leave the husk on and microwave for 2 minutes per year. I’m someone who could live without a microwave but this method is quick, easy and produces surprisingly good results.
I’ll try that tonight. Thanks. Are the bottom ears, touching water, different in texture from the top?
With pasta this would seem to be even more of an issue – some of it boiled and some of it steamed.
It was Kenji from whom I got the pasta tip. http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/05/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab.html
I’ve done the microwave for corn as well and it works for me. you leave everything on, as if you were grilling it.
Yes, done that, too.
I saw that Kenji tip, too. It has the added advantage of having really starchy pasta cooking liquid if you need to add it to a sauce to loosen it a bit. Lots more body.
Corn, for me that would be Fla corn, is so sweet today that even husked and left in the fridge for several days they are still sugar sweet
maybe better now than a few weeks ago, when I got 4 ears for $1 each at whole foods from Florida, and they tasted like cardboard. I didn’t even want to use them for corn stock.
or, probably depends on how long since harvested.
Doesn’t say much for their produce manager. Or maybe it’s that organic fertilizer they are feeding those crops. Taste like crap
Mods that’s a joke
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Got corn from Silvia and Ward’s Berry today at the Harvard Tuesday market. Silvia’s was sweeter and juicier. I followed digga’s low-water, short-cook method for both. It yields nicely crisp kernels.
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The time for corn may be now, if the corn we got yesterday is an indication. Sweet, crisp, perfect ears harvested just a few hours earlier (Parlee’s Farm, Chelmsford) were summer on a plate. These kernels actually needed no cooking. Simply cut them from the cob and tossed them into the skillet as I finished making a pasta with fresh tomatoes, a few slivers of fresh chile pepper, chopped garlic scape, and olive oil.
Interestingly, the delectable corn was straight from the field and tasted vastly better than corn we had from a farm while vacationing–that corn had been held in a cool storage area, possibly refrigeration, for some hours even though it never left the farm. I wonder if cooling or refrigerating ears of corn, even for a short time, makes a big difference?
A lovely way to enjoy corn at its peak:
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I had my first good corn of the season this weekend (purchased at Wegmans Chestnut Hill). I also had sub par corn from Wilson Farm and Applecrest Farm (Hampton NH) in the past few days. The Wilson corn was a throw away, Applecrest was decent but not quite there.
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Anybody still finding corn? We have loved Marini Farms in Ipswich, off Rte 1 past Topsfield Fair. Their corn is very sweet, small kernels and snaps/pops with juice, as opposed to other’s corn which has tended toward larger starchier kernels They actually still had some at the end of October and although the kernels were a bit tougher and more fibrous, it was still sweet and juicy, but it was their wind down and it may be gone, so I would hurry and call first We also got great zucchini, tomatoes, green beans etc but the are winding down on all their own produce but probably still have something. Really nice people there too
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Interested to hear that you experienced this, too. We’ve gotten small ears of corn from Farmer Dave’s/Hill Orchards in Westford the past two weeks when we went to buy apples. Both the ears and corn kernels are undersized due to the short days, yet sweet. I have even been getting a pint of assorted cherry tomatoes each week on my weekly runs up there.
They’ve been picking the last of the season’s produce, which has held on because frost is so late to arrive this year. I expect that cold nights forecast this week will end this last hurrah.
that’s interesting, because actually I got some Farmers Dave a couple weeks ago at Melrose Farmers Mkt and it was huge kernels and somewhat sweet, but very starchy. As far as Marinis, I actually meant the kernels are small, not the cobs and have been preferreing smaller kernels cuz they seem more tender
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Agreed. I wonder if the corn that goes to the farmer’s market(s) are bigger ears with bigger kernels and the smaller ears with smaller kernels stay “at home,” so to speak.
