Freezing Corn

Our corn is ripening faster than we can eat it.  I surfed around the Net to see what to do with it. I thought about canning it and then decided to freeze it. 

 

It is recommended that you cook it before you remove it from the cob, so I started some pots of water and went picking.

 

RJ helped.

 

I then set up a husking station to keep most of the corn silks outside.

 

Almost all of the corn has a bug or worm at the tip.  The older the cob the more that was eaten.  Just a tad gross. 

 

I broke off the cobs with major damage and brushed off any small critters into the trash.  I wanted to keep those out of the house, too!

 

First I cut off the tips where the depredation had occurred.  Then I washed and removed the majority of the silk and popped the corn into the boiling water.  OK.  I didn't POP the corn.  You know what I meant.

 

While one batch was cooking I worked on the remaining corn.  I boiled for 7 minutes.

Then I removed the corn and rinsed them under cold water to stop the cooking and drained them.  You don't want watery corn.

 

I had already removed the tips, so I set the corn tip down on the cutting board and cut down through the kernels.  Cut about 3/4 of the way through to avoid the tough bits where the corn comes out of the cob.

 

Keep a trash bag handy for the cut off bits.  Then you just tie it closed and toss.

 

I placed the cut kernels in a single layer on cookie sheets.  They sometimes come off rows, still stuck together.  You can separate these rows to get the trapped bits of silk that wouldn't come off earlier.

Freeze for an hour or two.

When the cookie sheet came out of the freezer, the corn was stuck to the sheet.  I waited a few minutes and they had melted just enough to scoop them up with a spatula and dump into a Ziploc vacuum bag.

 

After I sucked all the air out , I had a nice full bag to freeze for winter soups or southwestern dishes.

Here's the thing.  First I prepared the ground, digging out the weeds, and double digging to work in the soil amendments.  Then I planted the corn in three rows of about 8 feet long.  I did three sets of rows, planting them in two week intervals so they wouldn't all come ripe at the same time.  I had to water when there had been no rain for a few days.  I weeded between the rows until the corn grew about 4 feet high.

The picking, cleaning, cooking, cutting and freezing took about 2 hours.  I have one full bag of corn to show for it.  Granted I still have corn that isn't ripe, yet. 

I will not be freezing any more corn.  I will probably not grow any more corn, although it is quite tasty.  I can buy three ears of corn at the grocery store for $.99 all summer long.  They do not have bugs in them.  Farmers in Iowa (Is this Heaven?) or other corny places grow lots of corn and I like to support farmers.  If I buy it at the store when I feel like corn, I only have to eat THAT corn.  I don't have to eat corn at times when I don't feel like corn for dinner, merely because it is ripe. 

Canned corn is even cheaper.  It has no silk in it that has to be picked out.  It sits on my shelf, patiently waiting for me to desire corn.

When I eat my frozen corn, if I figure minimum wage for all the work I did to get it, each kernel will have cost about 75 cents.  I liked doing it.  I will like eating it.   I will not do it again.

 

At least I won't do it until the zombie apocalypse.  Then I will have to raise my own food and fight off hoards of zombies and others trying to eat me or my food.  But I can wait until then.