This summer things got a little hectic. WIth an almost-one-year-old underfoot, a garden overrun with weeds, a bountiful harvest, and pure exhaustion at the end of busy, glorious, sunny days, we needed easy solutions for storing our harvest. Which meant that this year we opted for freezing all of our veggies instead of canning them, for two reasons: one, it was quicker, but also, and prehaps more importantly, it is much more nutritious to freeze than to can. Canning over-boils the contents and zaps your fruit and veggies of most of their major nutrients.And since I intend to feed those veggies to my little guy, I didn't want to *zap* away all the nutrients.
So when our neighbor stopped by with about 40 ears of the most fabulous corn we have ever tasted, I *sighed* at the thought of cutting all that corn off the cob. Then an idea hit me- with 3 freezers down in the basement, we had plenty of extra freezing space (which is the biggest obstacle to freezing corn on the cob). Why not just freeze the entire cob? Could this be done, I wondered? If only it could be oh-that-easy!
A quick search on the internet uncovered a couple of disappointing facts: it is definitely possible to freeze corn on the cob, BUT the corn was doomed to become ultra-mushy. I thought about it, and decided to give it a shot anyway. 40 ears of corn were quickly husked and thrown in Ziplock freezer bags before I had time to think twice.
The first two ears weren't bad. We thawed the corn, and then threw them on a grill. A little mushy, but full of flavor and sweetness. It all went downhill from there. As time went on, each cob we pulled out of the freezer got progressively mushier. It was a disaster. All that delectable corn, doomed to an eternity of mushiness.
And then we discovered an amazing trick, completely by accident. I had reduced cooking time to a matter of seconds in boiling water in an effort to ward off as much mush as possible. Unfortunately, I pulled a duo of cobs out of the boiling water before the kernels were even warmed on the inside, and since I had already dumped the boiling water, was forced to microwave them for a couple of minutes to warm them up. And then it happened- the crunchiest, juiciest, freshest-tasting corn on the cob ever- straight out of the microwave.
The microwave??! Not what I would have dreamt of as the perfect solution. But should you ever decide to freeze your corn on the cob, know that it is indeed possible to have crunchy corn all winter long!
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