Corn, Corn, Everywhere Corn

Who does not love Indiana Sweet Corn?  Really, who I need names?  Well, my family loves it and we especially love it in the winter when you can't find it anywhere except our freezer.  And this year our freezer is full of it.  I thought I would share with you the process to freezing lots of ears of corn.  I basically follow this tutorial with just a few things that I do differently.  Also, I found out that approximately 5 dozen ears of corn equals 16-17 quart size bags of kernels each holding 4 cups.

1.  Shuck your corn (involve your kids too - I offer a quarter per ear shucked).
2.  Wash your ears.  Not your ears the ears of corn, but you knew what I meant.  It is good to wash your ears as well but that would be a totally different post.  I also take a vegetable scrubber and scrub each ear to get more of the silk off.  Apparently there is this special brush that does that but I don't have one of those (would have been good to have probably).

3.  I clean all of the ears and pile them in my biggest bowls and pots.

4.  Once they are all clean I blanch them.  I do a lot at once so I use my pressure canner since it is huge.  I boil water and then drop the ears in and set my timer for 8 minutes.  The reason I use 8 minutes is that it takes the water about 2-3 minutes to come back to a boil and then I boil the ears for 5 minutes.
5.  I have 2-3 big pans/pots/bowls of ice water ready and I drop the blanched ears into the ice water.  Then I drain them in my colander that I have in my sink.  I filled up 4-5 quart sized zip top bags with water and froze them and I just keep rotating them in my blanching water.   I put them in and then when I am done I put them back in the freezer.  I use ice cubes too but I was going through ice way too quickly so this worked well.

6.  Once the ears are drained and cooled, I get to cutting the corn off of the cob.  I learned this trick on the internet last year.  Use a bundt pan to cut the cobs on.  The ears rest in the middle and the corn falls into the pan.  Then I dump the kernels into bigger bowls until I am ready to put them in the bags.  Oh and do your best to keep your kids out of the corn because they seem to want to eat it as fast as you are cutting it off the cob.

7.  Once the ears are cut off I label quart size freezer bags.  I put in 4 cups in each bag.  I fold down the top of the bag so I don't  get the closing part messy.  I lay them flat and take a straw and close up the bags until I get to the straw, and then I suck out all of the air using the straw and then I seal the rest of the way.  I lay them flat like that in the freezer.

8.  To use the corn, don't thaw.  I just dump the frozen corn in my microwave steamer and add a pat of butter and some salt and 1-2 tablespoons of water and  microwave for 5 minutes.  You could do about the same thing on the stove.

There you have it - delicious Indiana Sweet Corn!

For more kitchen tips, please visit Tammy's Recipes.

This post is listed at Blessed with Grace – Tempt my Tummy Tuesday and Balancing Beauty and Bedlam – Tasty Tuesday.