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In Part 1 (here's a link if you haven't seen it) you learned about the types of corn and how to pick out good ears of corn as well as some tips on storing it.
Today we're going to get into the actual cooking of corn! (About time, right!!)
Getting Your Ears Ready
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| No, not this kind of ear! |
The first thing you need to do with your ears of corn is to get them ready. This is a stupendously easy task. If your corn ears are frozen, let them thaw.
There, you're ready.
Seriously, that's it.
No, you don't need to wash them. (Unless they are covered in mud, then it might be a good idea just to keep your kitchen clean.) The husks protect the kernels from getting dirt and gunk on them. You're not going to eat the husks so there is no need to make sure they are sparkly clean.
While you can shuck them at this point, if you want, there really is no reason to. Yup, that's right, corn comes with its own cooking blanket!!
If you have some particularly picky people at your table then you might want to shuck and de-silk your ears, but it is not necessary. In fact, the cooking process will make cleaning the ears easier, so you might want to wait.
Choosing Your Cooking Method
Just about any way you can add heat to food is a good way to cook corn. The most popular ways are boiling, oven roasting, and grilling.
Boiling
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| Double, bubble, toil and trouble... |
Boiling ears of corn is very popular because it doesn't heat up the kitchen as much as oven roasting does. Back in the day when air conditioning wasn't a thing, creating as little heat during the hotter months was a very big deal!
In today's modern kitchen with our better insulation, more efficient ovens, and powerful air conditioners it isn't as much of a problem.
The problem with boiling is that it uses a lot of energy, water, and time. It takes a lot of energy and time to bring the water to a boil and keep it there while the corn cooks. While it doesn't take long to cook the corn this way, pots aren't insulated and don't keep the heat in like an oven does. There's no real use for water that's had corn cooked in it, so it's usually just thrown out.
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Oven Roasting
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| Hmmm... That oven is much cleaner than mine... |
Oven roasting is a great way of cooking ears of corn if you're already going to be using the oven for something anyway. If you're cooking a roast, for example, then after you pull the roast out you can slide the corn in. The ears cook so quickly that you're using much less energy to fix them this way.
The downside to using the oven is if you don't already have it heated then you have to get it up to temp.
A way around this is to use the broiler function on your oven! As Alton Brown says, your broiler is just an upside-down grill. You just need to make sure that you turn them occasionally to get all the sides evenly heated.
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Grilling
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| Stolen from food-fire.com |
If you've already got the grill fired up, might as well use that to cook your corn! Unlike the with the oven, usually, you don't have to wait until you've pulled everything else out (off??) of the grill before putting the corn in.
We don't normally grill large objects like a ham that would take up all of the room. So, you can slap the corn down beside the hot dogs and burgers.
Using a grill you can add a lot of flavor to the corn, as well. Getting little grill marks on your kernels will not only add some awesome color but flavor as well! We'll get into that when we go more in-depth in the grilling section.
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Next time, we'll start the actual cooking process by giving you some ideas on boiling corn.
Stay tuned!!
Stay tuned!!
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