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Adam Style Fried Corn
Cut corn from 6 fresh ears, and scrape out all the milk. Season lightly with salt and plentifully with pepper. Fry 6 slices bacon until crisp. Take up bacon, and turn corn into frying pan. Stir well, then set over very slow heat such as hot ashes, until a thick, rich brown crust forms on the bottom. Turn into a hot dish, peel crust off the frying pan, lay it on top, and on top of that put the reheated bacon.
This same fry can be made with cream style canned corn.
A skillet corn built on bacon fat and patience, with the browned crust treated as the best part rather than a mistake. Everything depends on scraping the cobs and then leaving the pan alone.
- Scrape the cobsAfter cutting the kernels off, run the back of the knife down each cob to press out the starchy liquid. That milk is what thickens the dish and forms the crust; skip it and you have loose buttered kernels.
- YieldSix ears give roughly 3 to 4 cups of kernels, probably enough for three or four as a side dish.
- Heat, in modern terms"Hot ashes" means gentle, steady bottom heat with no flame licking the pan sides. On a burner, use the lowest setting a heavy cast-iron skillet will hold, and give it as long as the crust needs to set. Over a fire, set the pan on a bed of hot ashes rather than over open flame.
- Do not stir once it settlesStir well at the start to coat everything in the bacon fat, then stop. The crust only forms if the bottom layer is left undisturbed.
- Bacon fatSix slices of modern bacon may render less fat than you need. If the pan looks dry after the bacon comes out, add a spoonful of butter or oil before the corn goes in.
- Lifting the crustA thin metal spatula worked around the edge first, then under the centre, will bring it up more or less whole. If it breaks, lay the pieces over the corn anyway.
- Canned corn versionAbout two 15 oz cans of cream-style corn will stand in for the six ears. It is wetter, so give it longer over low heat, and check the label before salting, as most canned corn already contains salt.
Skillet corn cooked in pork fat is a long-established American dish, joining a Native staple to the salt pork carried by settlers, hunters and camp cooks. Cooking over raked ashes rather than open flame is standard campfire practice for anything that must brown slowly without scorching, and the prize crust at the bottom of the pan is the same thing prized in Persian rice, Spanish rice and any number of other traditions where the pan gets left alone long enough to do its work.