I use a slight variation to cook in the microwave. Cut off both ends, remove all but 2-3 layers of husk, run water over the remaining husk and then microwave. The wet husk provides the same effect as the wet paper towel.
InstantPot worked great but was over kill, 5-10 minutes to get up to pressure, 2-3 minutes cooking at pressure.
Correct - not hybrids. If harvested, they are not sold as seed - probably used as livestock feed by the growing farmer (or one of her neighbors).
Did detasseling for two years for DeKalb. Not a particularly fun job, but traveling around in a bus full of other kids was a hoot aside from the actual work involved.
Plus you got a killer tan from working in those fields all day. And yes, the goings on between fields was livley. Good Ole days type stuff.
May I ask how long to nuke? Your version somehow “works” for my brain.
Maybe a minute per ear?
My recipe: Remove husk and silk.
Place on plate in oven. Cover lightly with paper towel.
Nuke on HIGH 3 minutes, turning corn every 30 seconds. (nb: My oven has inoperative turntable.)
Not a serious problem. In nature, when the corn is eaten (husk, silk, and all) by an animal*, many of the kernels pass completely through the digestive system and emerge from the other end quite unchanged. They are then deposited back on the ground, included in a pile of fertilizer, and spread widely across field & forest. Quite a good reproduction strategy for natural selection.
For many species, yes. But not for corn, which won’t pollinate properly unless it’s grown in blocks of multiple plants close together.
Sorry, missed this question weeks ago.
I detasseled when I was a kid but I was never there for the harvest.
Note the term “seed.” Instead of eating that corn (or feeding it to animals, making fuel from it, etc.), they’re creating a new strain (A x B) in order to replant it. Think of how many kernels an ear has…and remember that a stalk has more than one ear. that’s a lot of seed. So they get a lot for their effort.
Including the B row ears wouldn’t produce a uniform field if they planted it together the following season, however. They’d like it all maturing at the same rate, equally resistant to disease, all that, to get the best yield. Hey, your garden out back? Go pick the three tomatoes that ripened today and get the rest at your leisure, as they’re ready. This corn? They’re running big equipment through to harvest it just once.
IANAF…they must harvest all of it. I never saw “stripes” of unharvested bull rows of corn in a field, however. Farmers will clear it, plowing under the stalks as needed. Sometimes you see a stalk of corn growing in a beanfield—that’s because they rotate crops from season to season to avoid depleting the soil of nutrients—but a stray corn plant grew from the previous year. So I don’t suppose you could leave lots of corn out there.
IIRC that sweet corn on the cob you enjoy with salt, butter, etc. at dinner—not detasseled (we’re not aiming for a new strain). “Field corn” is what we detassel and is used for other purposes. It isn’t tasty on the cob but you can make corn meal and other things from it. One important use: feed for cattle. I detasseled so that more corn would grow to feed more cows so that you could have more steak.
You’re welcome. 
When you see fields of it looking like they’re withering…? They’re drying it for storage because moisture would encourage fungus etc.
You the one to soak them in some cold water for a while so the husks absorb some moisture, or just yank them outa the sack and into the sheath of wet paper towel and Bob’s your Uncle?
Asking for a friend who also wants to know- salted butter or unsalted butter?
I just put them straight in with no added moisture, but I’ll try soaking them next time. Usually salted cultured butter from Trader Joe’s but unsalted is fine since I follow up the butter with garlic salt.
I detasseled corn for three different growers during three different summers. Hot work, that. Anyway, in one half-mile long field, something went awry when it was planted. It was planted in a two male, six female, two male row pattern. I guess the person planting it used a four row seeder and overlapped to get six rows instead of eight. This caused the two middle female rows to be double planted, producing twice as many plants at half the height as the four outer rows. While the outer rows were pulled by kids riding in the machine, there were simply too many tassels to pull in the two inner rows so they had to be done by hand while walking- not easy when the stalks are less than a foot tall and there are twice as many of them. When my turn for one of those rows came, I and the other guy would start off while the others would just wait until we got about a third of the way down the field. The machine would then start off and they’d pass over us at about the halfway point. They’d finish their rows and wait another twenty minutes for us to finish. Then two others would get the unlucky task of the middle rows. We did a solid twelve hours that day finishing that field. I didn’t really have to work that summer- I was a young teacher just wanting some extra cash. I think that was my last day!
I’ve been experimenting since I read about microwaving corn here. I’ve nuked corn both in the husk and out of the husk. Both ways work equally well. No soaking or wrapping in wet paper towels even when out of the husk - it worked fine without wet paper towels, to my surprise.
Salted or unsalted butter? Makes no difference if you’re going to salt the ears before you eat them. If you don’t salt the ears, then it’s just personal preference as to whether you like the slight saltiness of the salted butter or not. I like it because it balances the sweetness of the corn, but it’s not essential.
By the way, there’s also a practice that our bosses called deroguing. I liked it better than detasseling. Walking through the rows, if you see a rogue stalk—too tall, basically—you cut it down at the base with a linoleum knife so that it can’t pollinate anything. But again here, we’re not talking about sweet corn.
Also here’s a recipe that’s tasty.
We cook corn by cutting off the fat end and microwaving for 4-4.5 minutes. The whole ear slides out with no tassels attached, like magic. You just have to wear gloves and have the butter ready.
Which leads to another farm job for young teens - bean walking. With the advent of Roundup ready seeds I don’t know how much it is still done (I’m in the big city now), but farmers would hire kids to walk through their bean fields and pull out weeds the herbicides of the time didn’t get - mostly corn volunteers and thistles.
And that is one lousy job. I only did it once, for about half a day before I gave up. Made baling hay seem like a piece of cake.
Made me happy I never had to pick strawberries for a living. Gad.