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24 August 2010

Corn on the cob rant [More:]So now it's fresh corn season, and with it comes the clusters of shoppers gathering around the bins of corn to obsessively tear back the husk of each and every one and check it for...something. IN most cases I'm pretty sure people aren't even sure. Funny looking kernels, grody worms, sure.

I think people do this more because it's some kind of a ritual than because this is a good way to buy corn. For one thing, most people don't inspect other veggies with anywhere near this level of exactitude, even though they are often much more likely to contain flaws, and certainly more expensive than fresh corn (max price locally is 40 cents an ear). Another thing is that you can tell everything you need about an ear of corn by holding it, looking at the silk, and looking at the bottom end of the husk.

Not only is it not necessary to tear the corn open before taking it home, it doesn't actually help you avoid getting a bad ear, and it does cause the corn to start drying out more rapidly...a bummer for the person who gets to market late and has to buy the discards. It's especially a bummer if you like to grill or steam the corn in the husk, because it's no longer sealed.

At my summer camp we used to have corn on the cob once every two-week session, at least. That meant that KP duty involved working with some campers to husk about 200 ears of corn and wash it off. We did that at least 4 times a summer for 7 summers. I think that works out to direct experience with 5600 ears of corn at camp alone. That's where I learned that you can't tell much by peeling back the tip. You occasionally can see that you have a withered or fungus-ized ear and you toss that out. But it's equally likely that you have other messed-up ears, but the flaw isn't revealed in the top 2 inches of cob. This is especially true for insects - they live wherever on the cob they want.

When I'm making corn I usually just get 2 ears more than I need. After all, it's super cheap. That functions as kind of insurance if I get one or two bum ears. Then if no one wants the extra ears, you can cut off the kernels and freeze them for later. Yum.

I wish some food celebrity would talk about this corn-checking thing. If Rachel Ray or Alton Brown suddenly came out against it, it would stop practically overnight. We'd all learn to live with that little bit of risk, a little of that knife edge that comes from knowing we might get a bum ear. Come on, there's some appeal to the devil-may-care, reckless renegade flair of that, isn't there?
Heh, how funny, I just bought corn at the farmer's market today (there's one outside my work every Tuesday, I love it), and I started to pull back the leaves to check it out, and then I realized, I really have no idea what I'm looking for, I might as well just pick some that look nice on the outside, which is what I did.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 24 August | 19:56
Dude, I want to see this on YouTube. If you do not want to put it on YouTube, I will read it on YouTube for you, that's a great corn essay. Realted: I just bought two ears of corn today and I am going to the Morrisville Corn Roast this Friday. Yum.
posted by jessamyn 24 August | 20:09
The corn is sooooo good this week. I've already had it twice this week and I think I might make it for dinner another time or two this week.

I buy my corn in Chinatown (in Toronto) and not only do the majority of my fellow shoppers tear back the husk to check the corn, they also rip the entire husk off and leave it in the bins. Perhaps so the store has to deal with the compost instead of them? It's kind of crazy. By the end of the day, you have to dig through all the husks to find any remaining cobs.

Chinatown shoppers do check the integrity of every fruit and vegetable though. Not just corn. They make me a little paranoid that they're all watching me pick stuff out and thinking, "Haha, that white girl doesn't know how to pick good fruit!"
posted by heatherann 24 August | 20:10
I'm having Deja vu… didn't we tall about this exct thing last year?
posted by rhapsodie 24 August | 20:11
[...] they also rip the entire husk off and leave it in the bins [...]

I always assumed that corn was sold by weight, and by doing this, people were avoiding paying for inedible parts that could be removed. However, I realize now I have never actually bought corn on the cob, so if it's not actually sold by weight, then my assumption makes no sense.
posted by FishBike 24 August | 20:16
I could have written exactly what FishBike said. Is corn on the cob sold by weight or by cob?
posted by amro 24 August | 20:26
Oh, and there's a bin at my supermarket for that very purpose, so the empty husks don't litter up the corn display.
posted by amro 24 August | 20:27
Good grief you'd be told off for doing that here! Sometimes no matter how careful you get a bung one. As long as you find intact insects in time rather than partial ones it's all fine.
posted by gomichild 24 August | 20:31
Corn on the cob around here is sold by the cob. I think this week it's eight for $1.99.
posted by jessamyn 24 August | 20:32
I was never a checker until I bit into an ear that had been boiled for 5 or so minutes, and a chubby white worm crawled out of a hole in the ear, right into my mouth.
posted by iconomy 24 August | 20:37
Super polite Seattleites don't seem to do this but I greatly enjoyed and agreed with the rant. Also trying to forget iconomy's excellent explanation of doing otherwise.
posted by bearwife 24 August | 20:44
I'm an ear checker but I grew up on a farm that always had one field of sweet corn for the family, however it was never sprayed for worms and insects. What I look for now is an ear with fully developed kernels. I also look for corn smut, a fungus that is edible and quite tasty.
posted by Ardiril 24 August | 20:58
And that's why I prefer my corn processed into tortilla chips.
posted by deborah 24 August | 21:08
There is nothing better than corn on the cob picked that morning; we buy ours from a place I call the Rat Cheese (because it's the one non-seasonal thing they sell) - and you tell him how many ears you want and he goes back to the cooler and picks 'em out for you. They were all grown 15 minutes away, and are usually picked that morning. I have never had a bad cob from them. Ever.

There's a lot of corn sold around here that is marketed as being local, but is really from larger no-longer-family-run farms 100 miles away and it just doesn't taste as good - or look as good. So a lot of the old-timey (i.e. not catering to the creeping suburbs or people who like their country life pre-packaged in glossy segments) places advertise their corn by the name of the farm where it was picked, which I love. The day Holloways Corn pops up on the sign at the Rat Cheese is a happy happy day.
posted by julen 24 August | 21:30
If you do not want to put it on YouTube, I will read it on YouTube for you, that's a great corn essay.

I'm all for it! I don't have a video-makin' machine, though. It would be a great project if anyone's up for it.

rhapsodie, I get agitated about this every year, so I might have talked about it last year, yeah.

I was never a checker until I bit into an ear that had been boiled for 5 or so minutes, and a chubby white worm crawled out of a hole in the ear, right into my mouth.

Iconomy, I getcha - I never got anything into my mouth, but I've seen the icksters in the cobs. My question is: how is peeling back a little bit of the husk at the top supposed to prevent this? The worms can be anywhere in the corn, and the checking method just is inefficient at ruling out this kind of problem. That's the thing I find really frustrating. You can have an ear that looks great 3/4 of the way down, and then run across that little curled-up guy near like the 4th row from the stem.
posted by Miko 24 August | 22:34
Chinatown shoppers do check the integrity of every fruit and vegetable though. Not just corn. They make me a little paranoid that they're all watching me pick stuff out and thinking, "Haha, that white girl doesn't know how to pick good fruit!"

Strikes me as quite true, from my limited experiences in Chinatowns.
posted by Miko 24 August | 22:37
YAY YAY YAY farmer's market is tomorrow for me (and again on Saturday!) I'm gonna buy some cucumbers, green beans and some corn!

I don't know how much I've been paying for corn. Something pretty close to nothing. I tend to hit the farmer's market at the end of the day on Wednesday and get super deals because of it. I bought an overflowing box of corn last week for $2 (a banana box.) I roasted it with some butter and froze it. (To be fair, I usually go with my mom and one of the little old ladies always saves my mom good tomatoes and gives her super discounts anyhow.)
posted by fluffy battle kitten 24 August | 23:15
I've talked to the crime lab, and they have confirmed it: These are the same folks whose thumbprints adorn your avocados.
posted by Triode 24 August | 23:17
I pull the husk back to check if the corn kernels are developed. But I haven't seen undeveloped corn kernels in years -- maybe since I was in Boston? -- so it doesn't seem like a life-or-death sort of thing. I'm more likely to check in places where I haven't bought corn before, less likely to check in places where I've had corn that's turned out really well.

The farmers' markets here do not seem to have any corn. I'm not sure if that's because no one grows corn around here, or because our summer's been really cool and the corn hasn't ripened yet, or what. So I'm stuck with supermarket corn. Which is mostly just-out-of-farmer's-market-range-local-ish anyway, so it's been good.

Anyway. Ikkyu2 insists on a strong "Buy it the day it gets put out for sale, and cook it that evening" stance for corn, so I haven't noticed any drying out. I've also never noticed any corn cobs put back after having been peeled back to check; that seems weirdly picky to me.
posted by occhiblu 24 August | 23:37
I also look for corn smut

dude we don't need to know about your private habits
posted by desjardins 25 August | 00:38
I usually don't check corn. I usually just risk it. But it is a fine way to check that it is properly ripe, and not those little dry unripe kernels. Nad yeah, you can sometimes weed out those worm eaten cobs by pulling the leaves back.

Maybe there's some other way to check these things reliably, but i don't know about it.
posted by DarkForest 25 August | 07:20
http://twitter.com/AltonBrownNews

jessamyn: We have organic at the market at 59 cents each.

But my neighbour delivers it by the bushel for free, so we have had a lot of corn salsa and roasted corn over the last week. NOM
posted by terrapin 25 August | 07:32
Here's a similar rant, but from a grower this time. It contains the tips for selecting good corn. You can tell if corn is ripe from what you can see on the outside, and particularly by its heavy weight.

I can't imagine any farmer at our market even getting away with selling unripe corn. At the regular grocery store, maybe that happens.

Another tip sheet:
How to Buy Fresh Corn

posted by Miko 25 August | 07:57
Is corn on the cob sold by weight or by cob?

Well, I buy corn in Chinatown. This week the price of corn there is "5 for a dollar!". I have never seen a clerk weigh anything at a checkout in Chinatown. I'm not sure they even have scales. (The butchers weigh meat and seafood and label it before handing it to you.)

So no, they aren't saving any money by stripping their corn. But apparently they are making it rot faster, so I will try not to be peer-pressured into 'checking' corn in the future. Maybe the white girl does have a trick or two up her sleeve.
posted by heatherann 25 August | 08:18
At the market yesterday, corn was 3 for a dollar.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 25 August | 08:22
It's four for a dollar here - I just got some yesterday. I never check; I'm too lazy. They have bins for people to shuck it in store here now too, which is a new thing and, as it is a new thing, I don't like it. Bah! New things! Bah! Anyway, here is the obligatory cute kid story I trot out whenever anyone talks about corn.

Once, long ago, in a galaxy far far away (also known as Baltimore) we brought corn home from the farmer's market. My son was about 4 and he was helping me shuck the corn that evening. I pulled back the husk on one ear and lo, there was a big fat green and yellow caterpillar. "Oh look," I said, "Look what we got with the corn!" and Miles looked over at the caterpillar and said, astonished, "For free?!?" Ever since then I have figured that caterpillars are a bonus.
posted by mygothlaundry 25 August | 09:15
Local organic was 6 ears for $2 on Sunday.

"For free?!?"

Awesome!
posted by Miko 25 August | 09:32
I never know the prices of things, and I should, I suppose. I was listening to Howard Stern (substitute the name of any rich celebrity if you are not a fan) a while back, and someone was trying to prove to him how out of touch he was with the "everyday man" because of his wealth by asking him how much a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs costs. Well, I am far from wealthy and I couldn't tell you how much most kitchen staples cost if you held a gun to my head. I guess I kind of operate under the premise that I need those things no matter what, so why get all hung up on the cost and whether it's a few pennies cheaper here or there. That may be quite foolhardy though, I really don't know.

My parents, on the other hand, find endlessssssss conversational fodder in the price of gasoline, which is another thing that I figure I need no matter what so don't pay much attention to the cost.
posted by amro 25 August | 09:52
Oh, and mgl, awesome story!
posted by amro 25 August | 09:55
Well, I am far from wealthy and I couldn't tell you how much most kitchen staples cost if you held a gun to my head.

I'm in kind of the same boat there. I have a good idea what my total weekly grocery bill is going to be when I go through the checkout, but not really an accurate recollection of the individual prices of most items. That is despite looking at prices on the shelves when deciding what to buy, and going through the self-checkout that reads out the prices of everything as I scan it.

I guess my memory is resistant to that information because what am I going to do differently if I remember it? The only time I need to know it is when I'm deciding what to buy, and it's written right there on the shelf for handy reference.
posted by FishBike 25 August | 10:27
Interesting point. I'm kind of price-aware, which comes from 20 years of living on a very frugal museum salary. If I could manage to save 40 cents or a dollar on groceries in one category, that would mean I could afford more variety or a more costly ingredient in another category. Because my food budget for a good 20 years was pretty much tightly fixed, it made a difference if I could squeeze out some savings here or there on a staple and use that to pay for something else.

Today I find it really does still influence my shopping. I shop at a grocery store known for its low prices - they manage this largely by employing high school students almost exclusively, and also by not updating the store's look, layout, or staff uniforms since, apparently, 1963. It's lo-fi and quite cheap. When I drop into a Shaw's or some other newer megastore, the prices are often shockingly higher - like, .50 to a dollar higher for a single item - and it just boggles the mind. It bugs me to shop there because I can now see the difference, and realize that what I'm paying for is frequently updated store design (featuring moodlighting, produce stands set at a jaunty, faux-farmer's-market angle, and an abundance of the color green), and things like video screens at checkouts, soup and olive bars, and stuff like that that isn't doing much for me. I depend on the grocery store mostly for dry goods and canned goods, so I generally skip stuff like the crab-leg takeout buffet and those sorts of value-added areas which i'm sure cost a lot for the store to offer.

I do notice my price sensitivity lessening now that I am not as broke as formerly. I want to fight it, though -- I've learned all these great lessons about frugality and controlling expenses all these years, and if I keep up those habits, it could mean the difference between a nice retirement and the government home...
posted by Miko 25 August | 11:03
Dear Corn-Checkers:

Seriously? I know that around here it's ridiculously cheap. COME ON PEOPLE, CORN IS LIKE, 50 CENTS AN EAR IN SEASON!!! So, I dunno, buy an extra ear or 2 just in case or whatever. You can take a little risk for like, less than a buck, right?

Sheesh. Just pick up the ones that feel kinda heavy / dense for their size, and go on about your day.

This pisses me off as much as the avocado / mango squeezers amongst you. We don't want your bruisy leftovers either.
posted by lonefrontranger 25 August | 11:32
My life is so good.
It's totally devoid of obnoxious corn cob palpitators.
Yes, I'm being smug and self-congratulatory in a typically foreigner tone deaf rude way.

Why is my life so enviably free of filthy maize fingerers you ask?

We generally don't eat corn cobs here in NL.

Why, yes, you're right. We've got a lush socialist paradise here.
No senseless corn cob violation.

And universal health care too!

And tall women aplenty to boot!

this message has not been provided by the Dutch Club of Foreigner Traffic (Vereniging van VreemdelingenVerkeer)
posted by jouke 25 August | 12:28
obnoxious corn cob palpitators

Best. Sockpuppet/Band. Name. EVAR.

filthy maize fingerers

ohgodohgod this is EVEN BETTAR

jouke, I love your comment so much I wish to marry it.

...Which in your lush socialist paradise might even be legal!

*swoons*
posted by lonefrontranger 25 August | 12:51
and, as it is a new thing, I don't like it. Bah! New things! Bah!

And now I am happily saying "BAH!" for the rest of the day! My niece and I had a talk just this morning about how everything new is AWFUL until it doesn't feel new anymore, at which point it's A-okay.

Oh, yeah, about the corn:

I'm a peeper, but not a husker. If I buy corn at the big grocery, I pull back the husk just enough to see the very tippy-end kernels. I'm not looking for bugs or smut, but to see that the kernels aren't shriveled and dry. Sometimes the grocery has old ears mixed in with fresh. Our store has a big barrel for discarding husks, and some people do husk their corn there.

I don't bother checking the ears at the farmers' market, because I trust that farmers are bringing corn as fresh as possible. (Just back from the farmers' market in the pouring rain. I got a melon, some zucchini, a big Frankensteinian bunch of "imperfect carrots," pears, apples, and green beans... but I passed on the corn. Tonight's dinner will be zucchini fritters, roasted carrots, black bean soup, sliced ripe tomato with olive oil and salt, beer bread, and an apple-pear crisp. Perfect for the sudden bout of cold rainy weather!)
posted by Elsa 25 August | 13:01
OMG, it just occured to me that when I make the corn, I can use my dog corn cob holders for the first time. Yesssssssss!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 25 August | 14:12
Heh, you registered for those, huh?

I just did a COC taste check. The grocery store corn is sweeter and bigger and firmer than the farmer's market corn. I'm sure it's done by dastardly practices, though.
posted by rainbaby 25 August | 18:32
TPS, the little piggy ones are PINK. and way cute.

My Mom always checked the corn; she liked it young and tender. sorry, Miko
posted by theora55 26 August | 00:07
I have completed my corn video. I hope you like it.
posted by jessamyn 26 August | 18:58
I watched the video, and liked it!
posted by FishBike 27 August | 08:16
OMG! Duck With Dog Mask! || HugeFilter: my google-fu has failed me

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