Boil Corn On The Cob and You Lose

Boil corn on the cob and you’ll notice the corn tastes like water and the water like corn. If you think about it, you can make a flavorful vegetable broth by simmering onions, carrots, and celery in water. So, are you trying to cook your corn or make corn broth?

Boiling is a moist conductive cooking process. This means that your corn is in direct contact with the heat, in this case it’s boiling water. The flavorless liquid takes on the characteristics of the item you’re cooking. Also, the cooked item absorbs bland water, affecting the taste of your fresh ingredients.

Most delicate vegetables are better cooked in an indirect fashion. This means that the source of the heat doesn’t directly touch the food being cooked. This is the best way to retain color, texture, flavor, and nutrition. If you enjoy healthy cooking, then local fresh ingredients are important.

Don’t boil corn on the cob. Steaming is the best way to cook corn. Steaming is an indirect moist cooking method where the heat source is simmering liquid from below. Boil corn on the cob if you want, but you’re losing flavor, texture, color, and nutrition over steaming.

Boiling is to steaming as sauté is to roasting. When something is placed in a sauté pan, it’s accepting heat directly from the source, just like boiling, except sauté is a dry method of cooking. If you were to place something in the oven, it will cook by the indirect application of hot air, similar to the moist air used to steam corn on the cob.

The best way to cook the summer’s bounty is in a large pot with a small amount of water that will not actually touch the corn because they’re suspended above by a steamer basket or wire rack. This way, flavors and nutrition don’t leach into the cooking liquid, making corn soup and watery corn.

Now, you’ve kept the integrity of seasonal fresh corn in tact. But what if you have more fresh corn than you can possibly eat before it goes bad?

Freezing corn on the cob enables you to store the flavor of summer for later use. Summer is fantastic for fresh ingredients, but eating seasonally presents a small problem. Many fresh fruits and vegetables have a very short season, yielding great amounts of ingredients, but too much to eat at once.

Fresh corn tastes best directly from the field, but when you’ve got more corn than your family can eat in a week, summer must be preserved.

All things that grow in dirt must be ‘sanitized’ before freezing, canning or storing. Bacteria in the soil can cause illness when allowed to grow over long periods of time. Freezing doesn’t kill many types of bacteria, but high temperatures do. So, before sending our corn to the deep freeze, it’ll have to be shocked first.

Shocking vegetables means cooking very briefly in water or steam, then plunging the item into an ice water bath to stop the cooking immediately. The purpose is not to cook the corn, but to kill any residual bacteria before storage.

Freezing corn on the cob means removing the kernels from the cob. You can’t freeze the entire cob, and there’s not much reason to. The ingredient you’re trying to preserve is the corn kernels, not the cob.

After the shocked cobs are fully cooled and dried, they’re stood on end and a chef’s knife will cut a straight line downward behind the kernels but in front of the cob to cut all the flavorful parts off for freezing.

Then, simply gather the corn that’s been removed from the cob and store in plastic bags for the freezer. Sometimes, I’ll toast the corn in a cast iron skillet for use in Mexican or Latin dishes, or for a flavorful vegetable salad.

A fresh ear of corn is one of the fantastic flavors of summer, but it can be quickly ruined by improper cooking and storage. Boil corn on the cob and you’ve left the flavors of summer in your pot of water. Steaming and then freezing corn on the cob is the best way to have seasonal flavors any time of the year, no matter what you’re cooking.