Mid-summer has arrived and the sweet corn is stacking up at farm stands and markets. We wait for fresh corn all year. The season only lasts a few short weeks, so we tend to binge on all the golden goodness.
We make corn bread, corn pudding, street corn, corn salad, corn chowder—you name it. And, of course, we boil it, roast it, bake it, steam it, and grill it as a tasty side dish. Chefs and home cooks outdo one another to invent new dishes that make the most of the season’s bounty.
Before you buy your ears, however, take note of an important piece of sweet-corn etiquette.
Please Don’t Strip the Ears
I see it all the time: people stripping the ears of corn before dropping them in their basket. Oddly enough, I don’t think they really know why they are doing this. Perhaps they saw Mom or Grandma doing it and think they should do the same.
Actually, I can think of two reasons why one might strip the sweet corn:
Ripeness:
- To make sure it’s ripe. You can tell this without touching the ears. If the husks are fresh and green and the tassel at the top of the ear is still moist but has turned brown, the corn was harvested when it was ripe. Grab a few ears and head home for dinner. If the tassel is still gold, the corn had not yet ripened when it was picked and you should not buy it. Ditto if the tassel is dry and brittle, which means the ear has been off the stalk a long time.
Not Tainted:
To make sure there are no corn borers. When I was a kid, European corn borers presented a real problem. This larval form of a moth (Ostrinia nubilalis ) once caused significant damage to corn crops. The females lay their eggs in ears of corn where they hatch into ugly brown-and-black worms.
Back in the day farmers had few weapons to fight them except pesticides. When purchasing dinner, we wanted to make sure our com had few borers because they could really spoil a meal–especially if you only found half of one. Today, most corn is GMO and resistant to corn borers. You can strip that corn all day (but please don’t) and not find a single one.
There, now you don’t have to annoy the farmer to make sure your corn is fresh. (And the fruit stand owners really don’t like customers to strip the corn.)
Sweet Corn vs “Cow Corn”
At your local fruit or farm stand you will find sweet corn, which was hybridized to have twice as much sugar as field corn, Field corn, also known as “cow corn,” does not get sold for human consumption because hard and starchy, with dimples in the kernels. Sweet corn is softer to suit human teeth as opposed to what bovine teeth can chew.
In addition to cattle feed, the field corn gets “nixtamalized” for processing. This word—which you won’t find in Wordle—means a process for preparing maize, or other grain. In nixtamalization, companies soak the grain and cook it in an alkaline solution, usually limewater, washed, and then hull it.
The alkaline mixture softens the kernels enough to peel off their tough outer hull. That makes the corn more digestible and its nutritional benefits more “bioavailable.”
After that the corn gets turned into products such as high-fructose corn syrup, whiskey, food, and beverages but the majority of it becomes ethanol fuel.
The Cat Who Loved Sweet Corn
Who doesn’t enjoy sweet-corn season?
We used to have a cat who loved his sweet corn. At first we thought the butter and salt attracted him. It may well have, but Houdini would take an uncooked, unbuttered ear off the table and dive in. He would put his two front paws on either end of the ear and munch down the row, just like we did. We would save him half an ear whenever we had some for dinner.
And up here in New England, we like to play with how we pronounce the word “corn.” I often see signs by the side of the road advertising “Kōn.” It looks funny but we know that it means, “Pull over, there’s good food here.”
