Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Found at:
http://organictobe.org/index.php/category/gene-logsdon-blog/

From Gene Logsdon:

Sweet Corn From the Garden - In December

It can get cold enough to freeze spit before it hits the ground in a  
northern Ohio December, but we are still enjoying corn from the  
garden even as the jingle bells ripen on the evergreen trees.

Sweet corn? Yep, but not sweet corn the way you usually think of it.  
I love parched corn and why this delicacy seems to have gotten lost  
in the endless forests of corn in the midwest is a downright shame.  
Parched corn is easy to come by too, and if it is not lower in  
calories and cholesterol than other snack foods, don’t tell me  
because I am going to keep on eating it anyway.

We deliberately plant more white sweet corn (Silver Queen) in our  
late June planting than we can eat as roasting ears. We let the  
surplus hang in the garden through the fall, drying on the stalks.  
Sometimes we harvest the ears after they are almost dry and hang them  
in the garage. But it is less work just to let the ears remain on the  
dead cornstalks through winter and fetch a few ears as needed. As  
they dry on the cob, sweet corn kernels wrinkle considerably. In fact  
the sweeter the corn, the more it wrinkles. Once dry, the corn lasts  
at least until next harvest. There may be some advantage to leaving  
the corn in the garden over winter because hanging in a warm  
building, it can get so dry that it won’t parch as well. It is better  
in any event to leave the kernels on the cob until you want to parch  
them. The kernels shell off by hand very easily, at least with Silver  
Queen.

Parching sweet corn is about like popping popcorn. Put a very light  
skim of olive oil in any pan you have a cover for, or a skillet you  
can fit a cover over, and add a layer or two of dried corn kernels.  
Heat up a kitchen stove burner or the top of your wood-burning stove  
and keep agitating the pan on the hot surface so the corn won’t burn.  
The kernels will scorch rather easily, so you have to make sure the  
stove top is not too hot and to continuously shuffle the pan or  
skillet over the burner to keep the corn moving around inside. A  
older-type corn popper with a stirrer that you can crank works well.  
The kernels sometimes pop audibly, especially if they get too hot,  
and a kernel will actually pop out of the pan occasionally if no  
cover is used. But the kernels, unlike popped corn, only swell up as  
if they have suddenly developed weight problems. Salt them to taste  
or not at all, if salt is a no-no for you.

My fondness for parched corn began because I like to eat a little  
something snacky and crunchy with my bourbon as I do happy hour after  
work— happy as in cracking up at how the human race managed somehow  
to do something today even loonier than it did yesterday. I went  
through spells of potato chips, pretzels, peanuts, and crackers, only  
to be overwhelmed by too much salt or grease or oil or other  
ingredient I don’t even want to know the origin of. While I prefer  
white corn like Silver Queen, yellow sweet corn works just as well.  
Among parched corn gourmets there is general agreement that older  
varieties like Yellow Bantam, Sunglow, and Silver Queen are better  
than the newer super sweet varieties because the former have that  
more pronounced corn taste we appreciate. But any sweet corn will be  
satisfactory. I also like Silver Queen because the dried kernels are  
larger than dried yellow corn kernels and therefore are larger when  
parched, and to me crunchier. I have not tried to parch regular field  
corn, but presume it would not be as tasty as sweet corn.

Surplus corn? No problem. Give your friends who “have everything” a  
quart of parched corn for Christmas. I bet they’ve never received  
that before.