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?