Sweet corn, like most of the vegetables we eat today, never existed in nature without the help of humans. Corn, which is essentially a giant grass, is native to the Americas. It started being consumed by humans some ten thousand years ago, as a wild grass which was hard to harvest and eat.
Five thousand years later, the Maya, Aztecs, and other peoples in what is now the heart of Mexico, got pretty adept at selectively breeding this wild grass they called maize and turning it into something we might now recognize as modern corn.
But there was still no sweet corn.
This corn was dried and usually ground, and eaten as masa. Southerners, especially those far south and west, adopted it into their diets as a cheap, abundant, and easy to farm source of nutrition and the groundwork was laid for shrimp and grits, johnny cakes, spoon bread, and a whole host of what are now southern classics.
European colonizers, not understanding that the Maya and Aztecs developed a process called nixtamalization (which made corn’s nutritional content more available by cooking it in an alkaline solution before drying and storing it) shipped corn off to Europe to feed their poor. It replaced more expensive wheat and rye, but because it was handled with ignorance and disrespect for the native people’s skill and knowledge, a pellagra outbreak ravaged the continent. But that’s a story for another time.
Sweet corn varieties did not become common until the 19th century, when open pollination developed varieties that could be eaten right off the cob. It didn’t take long before sweet corn became a favorite, and modern industrial agriculture helped it spread like wildfire across the new nations’ farmland.
Sayings like, “knee high by the fourth of July” became demarcations of summers’ progress, and as summer reached its peak, sweet corn was ready for harvest, and no family get together was complete without it.
The sweetest variety, which dominated sweet corn plantings for much of the late 19th and early 20th century, was called Silver Queen. Some of us still have memories of needing to eat sweet corn within a day or so of harvest because its sweetness started to fade to starch as soon as the ears were harvested. The joke was you needed to start your water boiling before you headed out to the field to harvest Silver Queen.
But sweet corn, already under heavy influence from human farmers, has been a GMO favorite for some time now. Modern varieties, even some considered “heirloom”, which honestly is really a misnomer when it comes to any variety of corn, stay sweet until you choose to cook and eat it, and so many of those varieties, usually grown by smaller farms, are beyond delicious.
And while sweet corn does not undergo an alkaline treatment, it still has abundant nutrition, even when slathered with butter. Modern diets provide plenty of other opportunities to keep pellagra a forgotten relic.
We haven’t done it in a while, but in the early days of The Southerner, we used to serve sweet corn from our favorite local farmers, boiled to order, tossed in a lavish compound butter with the summer’s first, young, tender chanterelles, which pop around the same time sweet corn is ready for harvest.
Chanterelles are my very favorite mushroom. Their deeply savory flavor goes really well with sweet corn, so this was one of my personal favorite sides we ever served. It was always insanely hot in The Southerner’s kitchen at the height of summer, so adding a big pot of constantly boiling water was a struggle, but one well worth it.
When we were preparing this dish, I always wished we had a charcoal grill to cook the corn. It’s my favorite way to cook it and I don’t remember the last time I strayed. Those charred kernels bring so much to the party, especially when they’re hanging out with chanterelles.
This will likely be the star of the table, no matter what else you put on the grill with it, even in summer’s prime harvest months. Enjoy it all season but only in season.
And dream of it all winter.
Sweet Corn with Chanterelle Butter
Serves four.
For the Butter
- ¼ lb. very young, tender chanterelle mushrooms, cut into smallish pieces
- ¼ lb. very good cultured butter (sweet corn season is not the time to skimp on the quality of your butter), softened, plus 2 Tbsp for sauteeing the corn
- 5 ears of sweet corn
- ½ tsp of picked fresh thyme
- 1 tsp salt
- Lots of fresh black pepper
Begin by shucking and silking the corn and cutting the kernels from the cob. Using a spoon or the backside of your knife, scrape as much juice and detritus from the cob as possible and run everything you could get off it through a juicer, or puree in a blender and strain through a fine sieve.
There won’t likely end up being very much “corn juice”, but that’s okay. If this all seems like too much, you can sub out a little vegetable or chicken stock.
Add the two tablespoons of butter to a small pot with the chanterelles and salt. Saute until the mushrooms drop their liquid, then continue cooking until the liquid evaporates and the mushrooms begin to caramelize slightly. Add the corn juice or stock and turn the heat down nice and low. Cook slightly covered for about an hour, until the mushrooms are very tender. Stir the pot occasionally and make sure it doesn’t dry out too quickly. If there is any liquid remaining after an hour, raise the heat to cook it off. Add the pepper and thyme and remove from the heat to cool.
Chop the mushrooms as finely as you like, or pulse them briefly in a food processor until finely chopped but not pureed. Allow the mushrooms to cool to room temperature.
Knead the softened butter in a mixing bowl until soft and pale, add the mushrooms, and disperse thoroughly. You may have more than you need for a few ears of corn, so at this point, you may choose to grab some plastic wrap or parchment paper and roll it up into a log. It will keep well for several days in the fridge and a few months in your freezer.
In fact, this labor of love can be made in larger batches and kept frozen for a little taste of summer when the snow flies. It’s great for finishing pasta, or draped over a nice grilled ribeye or roasted chicken.
For the Corn
- 4 ears of fresh sweet corn, shucked, silked, trimmed, and cut in half
- A few spritzes of peanut oil, or another high smoke point neutral oil
- Room temperature chanterelle butter, about 2 Tbsp per ear
Lightly oil the corn. Start a chimney of charcoal and place the coals to one side of your grill. Put the softened chanterelle butter in a big mixing bowl.
Cook the corn over the very hot charcoal fire, as close to the coals as you dare. Use your grill’s lid to help cook the corn through without burning. Turn the corn often until each ear is charred on all sides. If the corn seems a little underdone, set it off to the side of the coals and close the lid. Check it every few minutes until it’s done to your liking, which to me is really just warm throughout.
Toss the corn in the chanterelle butter until well coated and serve at once with a little extra back pepper and some crunchy finishing salt on the side.