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Cold Corn
Cold corn left from dinner may be cut from the cob, covered with milk, and stewed five minutes. Season with a bit of butter, salt and pepper.
A leftovers dish in three lines: cooked corn cut from the cob, warmed briefly in milk, finished with butter. The whole point is speed, so treat the five minutes as a maximum rather than a target.
- QuantityThe original assumes whatever came off last night's table. Four to six ears yields roughly 2 to 3 cups of kernels, enough for four as a side dish.
- Cutting the cobStand the ear upright in a wide bowl and cut downward with a chef's knife, then scrape the stripped cob with the back of the blade to release the milky pulp. That pulp is what thickens the milk into a light sauce.
- How much milkNo amount is given; the original says only that the kernels are "covered with milk." Enough to just cover them is the practical reading, roughly a cup or so for 2 cups of corn; much more and you have soup.
- Keep it below a boil"Stewed" here means a bare simmer. Milk boiled hard will scorch on the pan bottom. Five minutes over low heat is plenty for corn that is already cooked.
- Butter and seasoningA tablespoon of butter for 2 cups of corn is a fair reading of "a bit of butter." Salt to taste at the end, since leftover boiled corn may already have been salted.
- Leftover safetyCooked corn should have gone into the refrigerator within two hours of dinner and be used within three or four days. Reheat it through to steaming, not merely warm.
- ServingA hot side dish, despite the title, which refers to the cold leftover corn it starts from. It also takes well to a scrape of nutmeg or a spoonful of cream at the finish, though the recipe calls for neither.
Creamed corn of this kind is a direct descendant of the older American habit of scraping the cob for its starchy liquid, a technique generally traced to Native cookery and absorbed into colonial and later domestic practice. Sweet corn was a strictly seasonal glut before refrigeration and canning were universal, so a recipe that rescued yesterday's boiled ears was less a novelty than an obligation.