How to cook and preserve sweetcorn

You know I have piles of sweetcorn. Actually a patch about 200 feet long (about 60 metres) and 8 rows wide. I think that should do us. As you know I feed a fair bit of fresh sweetcorn and all the stalks to the cows, sheep, pigs and chickens but I still have plenty to eat and preserve.  This enormous patch of corn is not unusual in these parts. All the farmers here grow piles of sweetcorn. In a land where all the little farms are dying, and the cows and pigs are gone and the barns are full of old cars and rusty tools, still the corn growers will set aside a large patch close to the house to grow the sweetcorn. Like a tendril from the past when preserved and saved food in the root cellar for the winter was all about staying alive. Literally.

I have been wondering how the women preserved all this corn in the past before the advent of freezers. These are enormous patches with hundreds of ears. This is an old tradition. The Matriarch remembers the old women in her family making piles of sweetcorn relish and in the winter this was served out of crocks with every supper. Whereas I have always thought of relish as a complement – in the old days it was The VEGETABLE. So I am going to be filling many many jars with  garden relish this year.

My research has directed me even further back to dried sweetcorn or parched corn. The children would help pick and shuck these huge patches of sweetcorn and some of the best ears would be scraped from the cob, dried spread on roasting dishes in the range oven, then put into paper bags and hung behind the fire (shaking occasionally) until quite dry, then stored in the cellar or basement in jars or covered bins.  This was a winter staple.

I am going to start some in the oven today. It might take days though. I will let you know.

Also I will leave a portion to dry in the field on the stalk and if the deer do not get it first I will knock off the kernels, jar them and compare them with the oven dried method.

Evidently rehydrated and cooked dry sweetcorn was a traditional thanksgiving dish of the Midwest. The dried sweetcorn can also be made into cornmeal.

Anyway come and see what I was up to in the kitchen yesterday. These are my three favourite ways with sweetcorn.

Sweetcorn Relish.  Every time I make this relish it is slightly different because as well as the corn I add other vegetables from the garden.

My goal is to make a relish from the gardens every day to spice up the stews and casseroles that I will be making on the woodstove in the winter. I have previously avoided making too much relish because no-one else loves it with cheese and apples or cold meat like I do. It is not an American taste.I have only ever seen it used on hot dogs.  But now that I see it as a side dish it makes perfect sense. Also if I add it TO the winter stews by the jar full it is more likely to be eaten and enjoyed. The relish of the day is Sweetcorn Relish.

This relish is an adaptation of Eloise’s Sweetcorn Relish over at Simple Recipes so if you would like the original proportions do pop over and see. Yesterday I  replaced the cucumbers with zuchinni, and added coriander seeds from the garden. Who knows what I will do today. I always use the water bath method at the end too.

During sweetcorn season we eat Sweetcorn straight off the cob and dripping with butter and in my case pepper and salt every single day. Sometimes more than once.

To make life very easy we Microwave the Corn on the cob  and IN the Leaves.

This is too easy  – you will love it. Pull off only the very outer leaves, leave the corn wrapped in its leafy blanket and leave the silks. Pop the whole corn in the microwave for Four minutes. When you pull it out, lay it on the chopping board and slice the lower part of the fat end and stalk. About an inch and a half. Then pick the corn up  by the silky end and give it a shake and watch the the clean corn cob slide right out.

Lovely.

Now to Freeze corn on the cob. I don’t like frozen corn so I make individual cobs for other members of the family. Freezing corn is all about speed.

Here are the secrets. Freeze your corn as fast after picking as possible. Mine is ten minutes from the field to the freezer.  Peel and blanch  for 6 minutes in rolling boiling water, in batches of three or four, you want the water to maintain the boiling temperature so you can start timing immediately, when cooked drop the corn cobs immediately into water loaded with ice cubes. Cool it fast. Dry, roll in cling film, (saran wrap, glad wrap whatever it is called in your country) and into the freezer straight away. Straight away.

The other thing to remember is that you corn is already cooked. So you only need to reheat! A long cooking time will result in mushy corn.

Good morning. Let me show you my most favourite thing in the kitchen.

It is this big metal tray. It make clean up amazingly easy. I use it for everything from rolling out pastry, kneading bread, to making pizzas to chopping greens and making salsa. I can pile vegetables  and my chopping board in it and nothing rolls anywhere! It is perfect for my very tiny kitchen.

Well we all know what I am doing today!

You all have a lovely day too.

love your friend, celi.