'Tis the season for food processing! While we await the ripening of our own garden produce, which we inevitably planted slightly to ridiculously late, we decided to try our hands at freezing corn on the cob. It was really quite easy to do, and now we have 9 dozen ears of corn that will enable us to savor the flavors of summer through the cold winter months to come.
What follows is a photo blog of the corn freezing process that we followed. I hope you'll give it a try. I KNOW that come January, the one sweaty afternoon of aerobic corn flipping will be completely worth it!
A few important side notes before I begin:
1) This was accomplished with two people. While I processed, B shucked. He shucked during almost the entire time it took me to process the three bushels of corn. He also came in at the end to help me finish packing and freezing.
2) Make sure you have these materials on hand before you start:
- gallon ziploc bags
- foil, saran wrap, freezer paper, or some other wrapping material
- ice, and lots of it
- tongs
- 1-2 pots for boiling
- 1-2 containers for ice water baths
- freezer space
And now, the process:
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The set-up: Boiling water on the stove; ice water bath close by, but not so close that the stove melts the ice water.
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Give raw ears of corn a good rinsing.
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Once water is at a rolling boil, add ears of corn. Don't overcrowd the pot.
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After 3-5 minutes, remove corn from boiling water and immediately submerge in ice water bath. Allow to sit in ice water for the same amount of time that it was in the boiling water. Note: boiling time will vary depending on stove, when you start the timer, etc. I used 4 minutes, 30 seconds. The key is to look for the color of the corn to change to a brilliant yellow. As soon as that happens, it's ready to remove from the hot and submerge in cold.
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Lay corn out to cool and dry. I first placed it on a rack in my sink, then moved it to the kitchen towel to finish cooling. Once cooled, wrap each ear in whatever you have available - foil, saran wrap, freezer paper, etc. You'll see that I used a saran wrap for some, foil for others. This is simply because we ran out of foil.
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Pack wrapped ears into gallon ziploc bags, label, and freeze.
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2 comments:
Interesting! And then what do you do when you want to eat them later? Do you stick them in the oven? Grill them?
Yep! You can do pretty much whatever you want. Oven roast, grill, remove from the cob and make soup or other corn creations, etc.
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