How to Freeze Corn
from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Don't you love the taste of fresh, sweet corn? It's too bad it's only available a few weeks out of the year. However, if you know the freezing methods passed down by generations of farmers, you can harvest or buy corn in bulk and enjoy that fresh taste all year long. What follows is a complete guide to choosing, preparing and freezing large batches of corn.
Steps
- Find the ears that are just right. A farmer only has a short period of time between when the corn is too small to be edible and when it's too big to be edible. Of course, everybody's got their own definition of what's too big to be edible! You can determine if it's just right by shaking hands with the corn. If the corn cob fills your hand nicely and the silk on the top is brown, it's ready to pick. If it feels too scrawny, leave it for another day.
- Have a seat and take all the husks off the corn once you've picked enough corn to keep you busy all day - a couple of hundred ears of corn should do it.
- Put the corn in containers or in a spot where you can keep an eye on your newly harvested bounty -- there are always critters (whether on the farm or in your backyard) that are looking for the easy mark and they will take your fresh corn away from you if you're not looking.
- Clean the corn--unless of course you're the type of person who doesn't mind a bit of silky natural floss stuck between your teeth when you're done eating. It's best when you get the corn all clean and shiny with none of the little silky hairs sticking to it. This is kind of a painstaking and sticky job. It helps to keep a bowl of water on the table while working to dip your hands into, otherwise you end up acting like Spiderman with everything you touch sticking to your hands.
- Move into the kitchen once the corn's all cleaned up. Shown here is one day's harvest (about 500 ears) all ready to be cooked.
- Blanch the corn. There are other methods of preparing and cooking the corn, but many believe this method gives the best taste. Blanching means you put the corn in the water, put the lid on, then you look the other way while bringing the water to a rolling boil.
- Take the corn out when the water's boiling and cool it down as quickly as you can. Once you take out one batch and put in the next, the fresh corn cools the water down a bit and you have to start over again, so it takes about 5-10 minutes to boil each batch. Now comes the hard part. You've got to cool the corn quickly, which is easy if you're doing 10 ears of corn. But how do you cool 500 ears of corn in a row? If you just put it in the water, the water gets warm and loses its cooling ability. You can put ice in the water, or you can keep changing the water, but both of those methods are for small batches.
- Here's the farmer's solution to this problem. Use the right side of the sink to cool the hot ears just off the stove, then move the lukewarm ears to the left side of the sink to finish up the cooling. Cold water trickles in from the faucet into the left hand side of the sink (1). The magic happens in part 2, which is just a simple upside-down U-shaped pipe that acts as a siphon to move the cold water from the left side to the right side. You start by dunking these pipes under the water to get all the air bubbles out of them, putting your thumbs over the ends of the pipes to hold the water in, then put it over the divider in the sink. If you've done it right, the pipes are still full of water. When the water in the left side is higher than the right side, it will flow through the pipes and into the right hand side.
- The second little bit of magic is the overflow pipe in the right hand sink. It's an S-shaped piece of copper tubing which stands up in the sink just short of the top and it runs down into the drain. When the water gets higher than the top of the pipe, it spills down into the pipe and goes down the drain. So now we've created a waterfall type of system where cold water enters a point 1, moves through the pipes in point 2, then exits at point 3. By the time it exits in point 3, it's actually pretty warm water because you keep dumping the boiling corn into that side.
- When you remove the boiling corn from the stove, you'll want to dump it in the right hand side of the sink. The water on the right will be warm, but you'll have a continuous trickle of cool water coming through the siphon pipes. Give someone the job of agitating the corn by stirring it around in the sink. That's a job that the kids love to do, so usually that's the youngest person, although sometimes it's just the most tired person.
- When the person cooking on the stove is ready to remove their corn, the agitator removes the cold corn from the left side of the sink and sends that on to the next step, then they move the warm corn from the right side to the left side of the sink. The hot corn from the stove is then dumped in to the lukewarm water on the right side of the sink.
- Here's the farmer's solution to this problem. Use the right side of the sink to cool the hot ears just off the stove, then move the lukewarm ears to the left side of the sink to finish up the cooling. Cold water trickles in from the faucet into the left hand side of the sink (1). The magic happens in part 2, which is just a simple upside-down U-shaped pipe that acts as a siphon to move the cold water from the left side to the right side. You start by dunking these pipes under the water to get all the air bubbles out of them, putting your thumbs over the ends of the pipes to hold the water in, then put it over the divider in the sink. If you've done it right, the pipes are still full of water. When the water in the left side is higher than the right side, it will flow through the pipes and into the right hand side.
- Cut the corn off the cob once the corn has been blanched and cooled so that the ears are cool to the touch. This takes a little feel so that you get enough corn without getting too much of the cob. This one is probably the most highly skilled of positions in the process and takes some practice.
- Chill the corn. Once the corn is off the cob, put it into cake pans for a good chilling. Cake pans work well because they spread out the corn and transfer the heat nicely.
- To do this right, you'll need about 6-8 cake pans and a completely empty refrigerator. Put the pans into the freezer of an old refrigerator, then move them from the freezer down on to the shelves of the refrigerator as you get new pans filled. The warmest ones go in the freezer, and the cooler ones get moved into the refrigerator until you're ready to bag it.
- To do this right, you'll need about 6-8 cake pans and a completely empty refrigerator. Put the pans into the freezer of an old refrigerator, then move them from the freezer down on to the shelves of the refrigerator as you get new pans filled. The warmest ones go in the freezer, and the cooler ones get moved into the refrigerator until you're ready to bag it.
- Bag the corn. Once the pans of corn are completely cooled, you're almost done - all that's left is to package the corn up for final freezing. Use quart and pint Ziploc baggies. You don't want them totally full, just enough so you can close them easily and then flatten them out so they store easily. A quart baggie is about enough for one meal for 4-5 people, and a pint baggie works well for 2 people.
- Clean up. Take out the garbage and mop that floor. Send the cobs to the compost pile and look forward to eating corn whenever you want.
Tips
- If you're harvesting the corn yourself, start picking it early in the morning. It's a great feeling when you walk through the corn field and the dew is still on the grass and on the corn stalks.
- 500 ears of corn should yield about 60-65 quart bags of frozen corn. It takes four or five people about eight hours to do the entire process, and you end up with enough to provide an entire family with corn for most of the year. Even though it sounds like a lot of work, it's a process that's been passed down for several generations, and once your kids learn how, they will always want to be there to help out if possible.
- To cook the frozen corn, take the bag out of the freezer and put it into a covered glass dish. Microwave a quart bag for about 6-8 minutes. Add some butter and salt to taste and you'll have fresh tasting corn in minutes.
- For another southern recipe, fry a few slices of bacon in a frying pan. Add a few slivers of onion (optional) and cook until the onion is clear. Add the corn and steam until the corn is done...This is delicious!
- A large rubbermaid tub works well for cooling corn also. Place a 30-gallon rubbermaid tub outside and drop in your garden hose. Leave the water running through the entire process and you will always have chilly water to cool off the corn.
Warnings
- If you're in a corn field, be careful to look for and step over any electric fence used to keep raccoons away.
- Keep things clean so that you don't end up with contaminated food.
- Although the raw corn tastes delicious and it's tempting to nibble, don't eat too much of it, because raw corn will give you a good case of the runs!
Things You'll Need
- Lots of corn
- Big pan for boiling the corn
- Some sharp knives
- 6-8 empty cake pans
- A mostly empty refrigerator and freezer
- Ziploc baggies
Related wikiHows
- How to Freeze Broccoli
- How to Freeze Cauliflower
- How to Cream Corn
- How to Save Money at a Farmers' Market
Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Freeze Corn. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.
