Well, now you’re just showing off. 
I’ve never seen anyone use a spiral method.
Seems to me that spiral would end up skipping too much surface, unless you are Jimmy Carter.
I just want to say, on Saturday I finally ate corn on the cob again. It was amazing. I’d been dreaming about it for several nights. YUM!
Its a bit early to be thinking about corn in NJ. But since you brought it up… when I lived in Pennsylvania 40 years ago there was a farm in Bucks County that grew for Green Giant. You could buy white corn from them at a roadside stand that was delicious. My understanding was that it was somehow not good enough for GJ. Kernels too big or too small or off color or something. I think the farm is still there.
Silver Queen became a big thing sometimes in the early 80s and I haven’t eaten much yellow corn since. The one exception was at a family gathering in Indiana. My Hoosier relatives always bragged about their corn and I have to admit it was some of the best I’ve ever had.
NJ really is the Garden State (in some spots, anyway) and local corn picked that day is hard to beat. The traces of heavy metals and other poisons are barely worth mentioning ;>). The absolute best corn I ever had was call “X” something. The farmer said he grew it for himself as the seed was too expensive to make it commercially viable. He pulled an ear off the stalk and I ate it on the spot. It was incredible. Since we had just arrested the guy for growing things other than corn (I know, I know) I didn’t have the heart to ask him for a couple of dozen ears. He was a nice guy and probably would have given it me without a second thought. To this day, I think out that corn.
Its probably a sin to purists but I’ve developed a taste for the roasted corn they sell at festivals. Huge ears, slathered with butter and then dusted with parmesan cheese and a bit of cayenne pepper or something. $3.50 an ear and its almost worth it.
So, of course, right after I say it, the markets have corn for 3 ears for a dollar, although they’re not particularly large ears, which is not surprising for this early in the season.
The genesis of this method was that childhood summer with no front teeth. For whatever crazy reason that method got me the most corn. Being a contrarian, I just kept eating it that way and after $$%÷/=€ years, it has become habit.
Stolen corn is the best tasting corn.
As a kid, we would have Zellwoodcorn on the cob, which was an extra-sweet variety grown not far from where we lived. Zellwood, AFAIK, is only grown by one farm now. We also went to the Zellwood corn festival, which is more fun than it sounds. You got all the corn on the cob you could eat with the price of a ticket. So good.
I too grew up in the mid-west in corn country. Man do I love good bright yellow sweet corn on the cob slathered in butter and crunchy with salt! Boiled, roasted, microwaved - it’s all good!
Where I grew up it was a rite of passage to get a job picking sweet corn at the J farm. Every kid at around 14 years old tried it out. But the work was so brutal and you had to move so fast that barely anyone lasted more than a few days. The farmer relied on being able to hire just enough kids to get through the harvest before they all quit.
But, now I live in Los Angeles and let me just say - they sell corn on the cob here, but it is just…NOT…THE…SAME! It’s white, or lighter yellow, and not as sweet, the kernels are smaller. Sigh.
A stereotypically cornfed Ohio gal born and bred, I grew up savoring corn on the cob, which called for nothing more than salt and butter (it went without saying that it had to be hot enough to melt the butter on contact). I still savor it that way, although it might get a dash of cayenne now and then.
Also growing up in contact with many European cultures, it became routine for visitors from Europe to see Americans happily mauing down on corn on the cob; their faces making a WTF expression, they invariably react: “But in Europe that’s what we feed to the hogs!”
Not exactly. What they don’t know is America’s breeding of “sweet corn,” which is the dominant strain of corn served on the cob to U.S. humans, and the kind always found as niblets in the canned or frozen vegetable aisles. Hogs get the old non-sweet corn same as anywhere. I discovered in my world travels that many East Asians are so down with the concept of sweet corn that to them it’s only for dessert. Malaysia is where I discovered sweet corn ice cream, made with our sugared-up American hybrids.
When I was growing up in the 50s, half of our back yard was a vegetable garden, complete with several rows of corn. We always ate the corn “just-picked”, with butter and salt. It was never a meal in itself, but always the first course. I always ate the ends of the rows first, then the rest typewriter-style.
OK. Seems like butter is universal here. How do you butter the corn? I have used these methods (in order of preference):
- Lay bare stick of butter on plate - then holding corn-shaped holders: roll hot corn lengthwise, around, and back-and-forth on stationary butter until it is all coated.
- Peel half stick butter - hold the wrapped end in one hand and apply to hot corn while rotating with the other.
- Spread thick layer of butter on a roll or slice of bread, then apply as in #2.
- Use spray-on liquid butter-like-product.
- Use butter knife.
I guess you can melt butter and then spread it on the corn with a brush as well - never tried that.
Other ways?
I usually do #2, but I’ve seen restaurants like Long John Silver’s just put them into a pan of melted butter until they are served.
I vote 1, 2, 5, in that order, with 3 a distant last place. I would NEVER do 4, as there is NO substitute for real butter. In reality, we usually do No. 5, because my wife hates to have butter that has had corn rolled in it.
I would do 2, 1, 5. I rather like the idea of 3 but have never tried it. But in fact, if the corn is good I prefer it without butter.
I made my first batch of corn on the cob tonight. Yum!
We have found option 4 (spray bottle) is a nice convenience. Can’t say I’ve noticed much if any qualitative difference between oley and butter on corn. (been dying for an excuse to use the word “oley” recently)
OK, I searched for “oley” and haven’t found anything even vaguely culinary, even on urban dictionary…
Oleo margarine. That’s how margarine (butter substitute) was known decades ago when it came out.
And… it is a horrible substitute for real butter. And not healthier, either, as once believed.
Yesterday I was at the store and corn was 1¢ an ear. That’s right, a penny. I joked to someone else that it must have fallen off a truck.
I bought six ears but didn’t get a chance to cook them last night. On the other hand, they can’t exactly be local so I’m sure one more day won’t hurt them.