Preserving and Freezing Sweet Corn
Learning to Preserve Vegetables
So when I first started preserving food. I was not used to home canned or home frozen foods. Growing up we bought all our groceries at the store and the only experience I really had with home canned food was cleaning off the canning shelves in my Grandma Hope’s basement after her passing (that wasn’t really a good first experience). So fast forward to adulthood and a huge learning curve. Thankfully, I had wonderful friends who did have experience and would give me tips and pointers. But sometimes you need to know the lingo to even understand the tips and pointers!!
The first year I did green beans. The neighbor had a lot of extra, so she dropped them off. Three Kroger bags, overflowing. She must have seen my deer in the headlight look, so she said, “Freezing is the easiest thing to do with them, just blanch them a few minutes and throw them in the freezer…” Then she left. I stared at those beans. What is blanching? For how many minutes? What do I put them in? Won’t they be soggy? How do I cook them when I take them out? So I headed to the library (yes pre-google). I should have just called her.
Anyway. I learned. Blanching is actually just partially boiling a vegetable before you freeze it. Why would I want to do that? Well no one actually likes this step, BUT the brief partial boil actually is needed to stop/slow down enzyme activity. Enzymes are what break down all the good things like vitamins, flavor, texture and even convert sugar to starch. If you want to see enzymes at work, open a new container of yogurt, add some saliva to it and put it back in the fridge; the enzymes in your saliva will do the same thing to the yogurt we are talking about with the veggies, just quicker. SO, if you skip to the step to stop the enzymes, they will keep working in the freezer, the produce you worked so hard to save for later, will come out bland, limp, and not at all like when you put them in. So even though it may be intimidating, hot and time consuming, don’t skip it. Now while you do want to blanche for a few minutes (it varies depending on the vegetable), you want to immediately cool it down when those few minutes are done. And NEVER put warm items in your freezer. Logic tells you that would be the quickest way to get your food frozen. But really, cooling your food in an ice bath, then packaging and freezing it, is better. Here’s why. As your food freezes, the moisture turns to Ice crystals, the smaller the ice crystals, the less damage they do when expanding in the cell walls of your veggies. The longer it takes to get your food 0 degrees, the bigger the ice crystals, the more cell disruption, and the more change to the original food that went in, so it won’t be the same when it comes out!! I have learned this lesson the hard way. Can you skip blanching and ice bathing. Yes, absolutely! But you will regret it when you sit down to supper months later and realize your mistake. So take it from someone who read the to do’s, and didn’t do them!
Freezing Sweet Corn
Since you now can imagine how many batches of beautiful produce I have probably had to pitch from not doing it right (even though I had info to do otherwise), you can feel a little better if you have been there, or if you read this and don’t believe me. It’s ok. It’s just freezer corn. It takes a while to feel comfortable doing anything new. And honestly, every year I feel pretty rusty until we get through a few dozen ears. So don’t be intimidated or be afraid try it again, and again (as in my case).
You always want to start with the freshest produce possible. So for sweet corn, if you find a local farmer that can pick it fresh for you and arrange to have it picked the day you plan to process it, that would be ideal.
Step 1-
Husk your corn and remove any silks. Some people pick these off. Some folks use a brush. A good friend of ours even created a motorized brush silk remover!
Also cut out any insect damage or bad spots
Step 2-
Sort your ears according to size. This will give you the best opportunity to blanch them thoroughly, with out over cooking!
Step 3-
Blanch- Bring your water to a full boil. Add your ears. Wait for the water to return to a full boil and THEN start the timer! If you stick to a mix of 1 lb of veggies (3-4 ears) per gallon of water, your wait time for the water to reheat in order to start your timer will be much reduced. We like to use a turkey fryer burner and pot outside, this way the house doesn’t get super hot; and turkey fryers have a nice basket that is just right for filling with corn ears for blanching.
Small ears-5 minute blanch
Medium ears- 6 minute blanch
Large Ears- 8 Minute blanch
Step 4-
Polar Plunge (Ice Bath)- Remove your ears from boiling water immediately, directly into a large tub of ICE water. You can use a large kettle, a clean dish pan, or a clean bucket. Whatever the container, just make sure it will accommodate ALL the ears coming out of the hot water immediately, you can even use 2 ice baths if you have smaller containers. Also, for Ice, we freeze half gallon jugs of water ahead of time and use those to keep the water ice cold. You are welcome to head to the store ahead of time for big bags of ice too, I just like to be economical. You will need to keep adding ice to make sure they get cooled down really well.
Step 5-
Dry your Corn. The more excess moisture you put in the freezer with your corn, the more ice crystals you will deal with later. Just lay a towel on the counter with a few layers of paper towels on top. Stack your ears up when they come out of the polar plunge to get dried off.
Step 6-
Cut your kernels off the cob. Cut as close to the cob as possible if you like whole kernel corn. For a cream-style corn, skim only the top half of the kernels off, then do a second swipe to get the remainder of the kernels (this will be juicier).
Corn-On -The Cob. Freezing whole ears is possible. Make sure they are dry and tightly wrap them individually with heavy duty aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Once wrapped individually, pack them in groups in a freezer bag. Remove air and label the freezer bag with contents and year. Freeze.
Step 7-
Pack your container. We have used quart size freezer bags in the past with the seal closure at the end. These work, just make sure you burp the bag(carefully squeeze any extra air out). Also, remember if your bags are gooey or wet when they go in the freezer, they will probably stick together and may make it very difficult to remove them. The bags may even rip and damage your hard work! You can also use freezer containers. These are tupperware style containers that are designed for freezing and thawing. They stack really well in the freezer, are easy to label and reusable year to year. After years of freezer bags gone bad, I finally reached out to a friend who has been freezing food much longer than me. She could sympathize with my bag issues completely and convinced me to switch to containers. (I already did strawberries and peaches in the containers instead of bags and am very happy with my choice!)
Step 8-
Label- You may be sure what is in that container today, because it has taken so much energy to get it done. But trust me, you may be glad for a piece of masking tape that says “Creamed Corn 2023” in a year or two when the freezer needs cleaned out and you think that what you are looking at was corn from last year but you aren’t sure. Take a minute and label with contents and year!
Step 9- FINALLY!
Freeze!! One last chance to avoid those ice crystals that damage your freezing food. For optimal freezing conditions, try not to put more than 3 lbs of produce per 1 cu. ft of freezer space at a time (if you aren’t sure your freezer size, open the freezer door and see if you can spot a label that tells you). And you want good air circulation around new additions in the freezer at it freezes. Which means, space those containers out and once they are frozen you can organize them.
Enjoy your hard work
Now you can look forward to sweet corn in the coldest months of the year.
Whole Kernel or cream-style- We like to put ours in the fridge earlier in the day to let it thaw and then put it in a sauce pan on the stove with butter and a little salt to heat it up. YUM!! Just remember this has already been partially cooked, so overcooking here can easilty create chewy corn. So it really shouldn’t take long. If you don’t thaw it out ahead of time, run it under warm water until you are able to break your corn block apart (still in the container, a good bang on the counter often works). If you skip breaking the frozen corn into smaller pieces before putting in a heated pan, it just doesn't heat evenly, some may be overcooked and some not very warm. It just takes practice, so plan ahead this summer and put back plenty!
Corn-on-the-Cob - Remove what ears you want from the freezer bag and reseal it. Thaw the ears for 9-10 hours in the refrigerator prior to reheating. To cook the ears, heat up 3/4 cup water in a skillet, add 4 ears and cover for about 6-10 minutes, until tender. Make sure the skillet is covered and the water doesn't evaporate, add more if necessary. Remove the ears to a hot serving dish. There should be a few tablespoons of “corn water” left in the skillet, add the 2 tablespoons butter to this (you can even throw in 1/2 tsp chili powder for flavor if you don’t mind spicy). When the butter melts, spoon this buttery liquid back over your ears and serve!!
HAPPY FREEZING!!
* I also want to give credit where it is due to Rodale’s Complete Book of Home Freezing by Marilyn Hodges and Rodale Test Kitchen Staff for being an excellent resource for everything I could ever want to know about freezing food.