Roasted Corn on the Cob

Fresh Corn on the cob can be an amazing thing or an offense to your taste buds.  Corn on the cob is a rite of passage of summer, you can see old pick-ups with the beds filled with corn right out of the field parked on the side of the highway or in parking lots.  Old farmers in rough clothes and battered hats sitting in sling bottomed patio chairs while the sun crisps their weathered skin even more, displaying their wares to passers-by.  I can see it now those golden ears exposed to the road showing the row upon row of well-developed kernels, brown paper bags stuffed to the gills, overflowing with paper-y husks, brown tassels waving in the wind of the passing cars.

My drive to work allows me to follow the growth of a certain field of corn and allows me to wonder where all those ears of corn are going.  At the beginning of July this field of corn was barely 12″ tall, enter a few weeks of rain and very humid weather and this field shot up to well over 6′. There must be over 50 acres of corn on this farm which boggles the mind when you try to figure how many ears of corn that is…

The Hungry Neophyte & Kentucky Fried Chick were the catalyst for this blog entry, we, H.N. and I, talked about this more than a month ago right around the time I started this blog and I was looking for some ideas from those who spurred me on to commit to blogging.  Granted it has taken me a little bit to come around to putting this together but I think it is worth the wait.

When you go to purchase your corn you want to get the freshest you can get but how do you know its fresh?  There is an easy trick to finding out.  If you will peel back the husk to expose some of the kernels and use your finger nail to pierce a kernel, if it squirts juice like squashing a grape it is fresh, if  there is no pop, moisture or very little move along to another ear.  Be picky!  Here in the Lexington area one of the best places to get consistently good corn is Whole Foods over at Lexington Green.

I love using bi-colored corn as it is super sweet and plays well off the compound butter but if its fresh it is a candidate for the grill for me. Now repeat after me…ITS OK TO BURN…the husks that is, yes the husks will burn-a lot but its OK as long as the corn itself is not burning the smoke from the charring of the husks adds to the flavor of the corn.

This is not a direction heavy recipe its pretty straight forward but there are lots of photos…just because so many of them came out so well.  The herbs and spices in the photo above are what I used for the compound butter.  Look for a compound butter entry later in the week.  I want to add 2 more flavors before posting it.

4-6 ears of Corn

Plain butter or Compound Butter of your choice

Depending on the size of your ears of corn this whole process should only take about 5-10 minutes max. fair warning if you over cook it the corn will be shriveled and dried out. With fresh corn less is better. I turn the ears a few times as I am grilling the meat at the same time.

Peal back the husk without removing it and remove the corn silk

Apply compound butter

Replace the husks sticking it to the butter to hold in place and twist the tops

On to the grill, diffused medium to Medium low heat

Burnt husks are a good thing…

Click to see the spice

Basil Lemon roasted corn

Lovely bits of herbs

to remove the husks of you would like just use a sharp heavy knife to whack them off.

Now go play with your food.

WikiJan