Are you a “typewriter,” who starts at one end and eats a straight line through to the other?
Are you a “ringer,” who starts at one end and eats a circle around it?
Or are you a “random corn eater,” who just takes randomly placed bites until all the corn has been eaten?
Myself, I am a ring-eater. Butter and salt, please.
Typewriter, checking in.
But I do stop at the end of each row to make sure my teeth are relatively clear.
Funny you should ask. Today I bought my first two cans(toucans) of hominy, in both the yellow and white varieties. I spent an hour in the grocery store early this morning, slowly scanning each shelf for a new and exciting, yet low in calorie, taste. I plan to eat them for lunch tomorrow.
I tend to be extremely OCD when it comes to eating corn. When I am alone I will never eat it straight off the cob. I try to pop each kernel out individually or in rows if the corn has not been over-cooked. I feel upset and let down if I leave any part of the husk on the cob. I think this stems from my childhood when I would make corn cob pipes, trying to imitate the perfected look of those sold at the local drug store. I was equally retentive about my lawn until I learned that they were actually playing on astroturf. 
Of course, I meant to say anal-retentive.
If I have the time, it’s typewriter. If I’m hungry, it’s random snarfing.
The real secret to good corn on the cob is to turn off the unsalted, boiling water immediately after you dump in the husked corn.
Some butter, a dash of salt and a sprinkling of ground black pepper…
Paradise.
Are you crazy? You must go down the ear like a typewriter in big enough bites to only take 4 sides. It MUST come out square or you have NOT done a good job.
and the more butter and salt the better… Mmmm…
[hijack]
From the Guinness sign:
“If he can say as you can
Guinness is good for you,
How grand to be a Toucan,
Just think what Toucan do.”
[byejack]
Personally, I’m both a “ringer” and a “typewriter,” insofar as I will ring the ends of the cob, and then typewrite back and forth until the wonderfulness of butter, salt, pepper and corn is all gone, although I will on occassion eat a naked cob, if its sweet enough.
Buttering corn:
To spread it on with a knife, though polite, is an exercise in futility. The butter melts and falls from the blade iretrevievably. To keep an ad hoc cube of butter on a dish and then roll the cob over it is the most practical method (short of buying a special corn-buttering device no doubt available at a yuppie kitchenware store), but the cube of butter is thereafter condemned due to the loose silk it retains. And I have actually seen country folk butter a slice of bread and then use the bread to swathe the corn, but this method strikes of unorthodoxy.
Typewriter here. However, I sometimes miss a few kernels, so I have to go back and pick them off one by one.
Typewriter here (although it’s three rows at a time; my teeth don’t stick out like tweezers y’know).
Char-grilled (broiled) rather than boiled for me.
Oh and eating it while it’s still too hot thus burning a huge blister on the roof of my mouth is compulsory.
Yum, one of my favorite summer treats.
I’m a ringer. Lots of butter, but no salt, thankyouverymuch. And it must be butter too, none of that margarine-funky-weird-pseudo-butter stuff.
I’m a ringer but since I have a nice gap in my front teeth (one tooth didn’t develop) I tend to leave little trails of corn around the cob, it looks like I leave about half the corn but it’s mainly the shell on the bottom that is left behind. Consequently I have to floss after I have my corn :D…nope nothing stuck there now…
Keith
Rather like Munch, I will often ring the ends to make sure no non-aligned kernels escape and to offer my hands better purchase on the cob before getting down to the serious business of typewritering the rest of the ear.
I’m cob challenged. I go at it typewriter style but when I’m done it is never square, like normal people. Just a ragged, round cob that I have to scrape. It looks like a kid with one tooth had gnawed on it for an hour.
If I’m boiling it, I use sugar water. But I really like to pull the husk back, de-silk it, rub with butter and some salt, cayenne and chili powder, fold the husk back over it and toss it on the grill until done.
As far as buttering, I’ve had a “Corn Butterer” gadget for years that I got from the Pampered Chef. http://www.pamperedchef.com
They are awesome. Growing up though, the best way to do it was to put a big pat of cold butter on a roll or slice of bread, then wrap it around the corn and wipe the butter in.
If you’ve never eaten hominy, it is a variety of corn that is impressive in size, having kernels that are two or three times larger than regular corn, but it tastes just awful. It must be the kind of corn they use for corn chips and corn tortillas because the taste is undeniably similar.
Does anybody know what to do with a mostly full of hominy, or sould I feed it to the alligators? I assume I could make corn tortillas but would they taste the same. Does anyone have the recipe for Doritos®?
I’m a ringer. But I have such an overbite that I leave lots of partial kernels behind. I try to clean them up as best I can, but it gets a little disgusting to watch me sucking on a corncob…
I pick the corn out of my turds and just chow down.
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Sorry. I just couldn’t resist. Actually, I eat the ends off (“ringer”), then do the typewriter thing.
A combination of both. Two bites down, then all the way across.
Oh Typewriter - as fast as humanly possable
I tend to alternate ringer and typewriter. But I always eat a ring around the ends, even when I eat the rest typewriter-style.
And boiled corn is okay, but grilled is better.