Freezer Preserved Creamed Corn

At the same time as I'm doing the fermenting and pickling of various goodies, I am preserving other foods at the peak of their freshness.

One of our family's favorite vegetable dishes is creamed corn.  I preserve enough to make sure that we have some for Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and any other special holiday between now and next summer. I usually do about five dozen ears.

This year, I want to share with you a trick that I learned from watching "Good Eats" with Alton Brown, whom I would call the food meets science guru.  It's the only cooking show that I have ever watched with my husband. I'm fairly sure that we have seen every episode and own a few on DVD.  His take on the scientific approach to cooking has greatly affected my cooking preparations and techniques.

Here's his secret technique for getting the kernels off the cob and my simple recipe for preparing and freezing creamed corn.

First, used to your largest bowl you can, preferably one with silicone or rubber to grip your countertop as you work. I'm using the largest bowl for my set from Williams-Sonoma that has a rubber ring on the bottom for stability. 

Next, find a bowl that fits very well into the bottom of your large bowl. This bowl should sit very stable yet raise your work area 5 to 7 inches above the bottom of the bowl. As you can see here, i'm using a soup bowl as the surface to rest the base of the corn cobs. 

Shave the corn on every side, not going to deep into the cob.

Now here's the trick to making true creamed corn - take the back of your blade and run it down the corncob again, as demonstrated in the picture.  This pulls out the sweet "milky" goodness that is left in the cob and adds the creaminess to the corn.  This is the trademark of true creamed corn and allows you to use less heavy whipping cream when doing a pre-freeze cook. 

There are special devices made for removing the corn from the cob, but they do not do as good of a job of removing this sweet inner part of the kernel as a simple knife back. 

After we have removed all the kernels and the milkiness from the cobs, we put them into a large pot for a short pre-freeze cook. This helps the corn to resist freezer burn.

For every three dozen ears of corn, I add one stick of butter (1/2 cup) and 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream. You could get by with less and it will still taste wonderful, this is just my southern Appalachian heritage showing through - we can take anything healthy and make it unhealthy, but it tastes so good!  Salt and pepper to taste. I try to leave mine not completely seasoned, so that I am able to finish seasoning it when I defrost it and cook it for the actual celebratory meal.

After only about 5 to 10 minutes, I remove the corn from the heat. I give it an hour to cool down to closer temperature.  Next I package it for freezing, but I put it in the refrigerator for 6 to 12 hours to bring it closer to it's freeze point. The closer anything is to it's freeze point when you put it the freezer, the less likely are your chances for freezer burn.  So even putting it on a shelf closest to your freezer, where it is coldest in your fridge, is a good idea.  After 6 to 12 hours, move the packaged creamed corn into the freezer for long-term term storage. We eat ours up to a year after packaging and freezing.

Defrost frozen creamed corn for 24 hours before cooking. 

Then cook on a medium low heat until desired consistency.  At this point we sometimes add more cream, or butter, or salt and pepper, to taste.