Frozen Sweet Corn

We picked this up at the Farmers Market in the morning...

I feel rather lame with this "recipe". It's not really a recipe, but I've had enough people ask how we got our frozen corn to taste so delicious that I really don't have a choice. No, we don't cook it or add any other ingredients prior to freezing. There is no magic. But, this method is delicious and we've been doing it for a few years. The only change this year was the addition of our vacuum sealer we bought early in 2014.

The key to freezer corn is, well, the corn. Old starchy corn on the cob will give you starchy freezer corn. I know many people that wait until they've had their fill of fresh corn in the summer before they start to freeze. By then it's too late. Of course, it is a matter of preference, I guess. I just prefer the sweet, crisp kernels. 

We froze 12 dozen ears over the course of 2 separate weekends. We ended up with about 48 pints of corn. For us, it made sense to freeze in 2-cup batches. A little leftover if we have dinner as a side, but plenty for recipes. An important note: smaller ears yield less corn. That seems like a no-brainer. But, we got about 16 packages out of the first 6 dozen. Yes, your math is correct. Our second 6 dozen yielded more than 30 pints of corn. We bought from the same farmer two weeks apart.

Our process for preparing the corn for freezing is simple. We remove the husks and as much of the silks as we can. We aren't as freaked out about removing EVERY.SINGLE.STRAND.OF.SILK!!!! Yes, you might find a couple of silks in the corn you eat at our house. It will not hurt you. After shucking the corn, we sanitize the sink, then fill it with cold water for rinsing. I know: why are you sanitizing the sink when you're going to wash corn? Because we use the sink for everything, we won't be cooking the corn before freezing, and sanitizing makes sure there's no residue from raw meat in the sink.

Harry is the knife man. We don't have any fancy gadgets for slicing the corn from the cobs. When I was a kid, Mom, Gramma, and Aunt Brenda would use their electric knives to cut the kernels from the cob. We don't even have an electric knife anymore. If your knife is as sharp as it should be, you'll have no trouble cutting the corn kernels from the cob.

The picture at the top is a pretty accurate representation of how we work. Harry cuts the corn into a pan, then it's transferred into a big bowl. I measure two cups of corn into the prepared vacuum bags. After we have it all bagged, Harry runs each bag through the sealer. Because I had so many packages during the second round of freezer corn, I divided them among the deep freezer and two refrigerator freezers until they were frozen. By doing it this way, I didn't introduce such a mass of room temperature food at once.

Now, you don't need to vacuum seal this sweet corn for the freezer. We didn't own the sealer until this year and we always used zip bags in the past. The square freezer containers work great, too. 

If you DO have a vacuum sealer, you can count on your frozen sweet corn tasting like summer in November or December. Our bags are designed for boiling. So, I cook the corn by putting the sealed bag into boiling water. I'm not water-logging the corn and it tastes just picked.

So, that's it. No special equipment. No added salt. Summer during the winter. Will you be freezing sweet corn next summer?

...and it was in the freezer by late afternoon.