TIP OF THE DAY: Raw Corn
Just eat it! No cooking required. |
While cooked fresh corn is one of summer’s great delights, you can eat corn without cooking it. We’ve been eating raw corn almost daily at our NIBBLE lunches. Our chef (one of the benefits of working at a food magazine) loves tossing it into salads.
Yet, we haven’t done a post on the joys of raw corn. We were recently reminded of that via an email from The Kitchenista, one of our favorite NIBBLE writers and a great cooking teacher (learn step-by-step cooking techniques at TheKitchenista.com). Cut the raw kernels right off the cob for a sweet and crunchy addition to many dishes (and yes, you can eat it raw from the cob when it’s fresh-picked and so sweetly seductive). Raw corn is crunchier than cooked corn: When cooked, the starchy stiffness breaks down.
Let us know your own ideas. |
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| Before you buy it, ask when the corn was picked. You want fresh corn; and be sure to use it that day. From the moment corn is picked, its sugars begin to convert to starch. Three-day-old corn won’t deliver that enjoyable sweetness.
NOTE: Don’t pull back the husk and silk when buying corn. It usually doesn’t tell you anything and starts to dry out the corn, even if you plan to use it later that day. If you don’t buy that ear, you’re leaving it to dry out for the next person. How To Cut Corn From The Cob 1. Remove the husk and stringy corn silk from the ears: Just pull down and yank them off. If you’re having problems removing the strings of silk, try a slightly damp paper towel with a downward motion. 2. Hold the ear upright in a medium or large bowl. With a large knife, cut downward along one side of the cob to remove the kernels, using a back-and-forth, saw-like motion. Take your time and cut as close to the cob as you can. 3. Rotate the cob and repeat until you’ve removed all the kernels. Use the leftover cobs to make corn stock—we’ll post the recipe as tomorrow’s Tip Of The Day. If you think you’ll be removing corn from the cob on a regular basis, there are gadgets called corn cutters or shuckers that help people who don’t have great knife skills. The best one we’ve used is this Corn Zipper from Kuhn Rikon. It’s a curved blade that zips right down the curve of the cob and makes the job easy.
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