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Dried Corn
For a family of eight, wash a pint of corn through one water, and put to soak over night in clean cold water (if impossible to soak so long, place over a kettle of hot water for two or three hours); when softened, cook five to ten minutes in water in which it was soaked, adding as soon as boiling, two table-spoons butter, one of flour, and a little salt and pepper. Another good way to finish is the following: Take the yolk of one egg, one table-spoon milk, pinch of salt, thicken with flour quite stiff so as to take out with a tea-spoon, and drop in little dumplings not larger than an acorn; cover tightly and cook five or ten minutes; have enough water in kettle before adding dumplings, as cover should not be removed until dumplings are done.
This is dried sweet corn — kernels cut from the cob and dried on trays or strung up, not the field corn used for hominy or grits. Two finishes are given: a simple butter-and-flour sauce, and a version dropped with egg dumplings.
- What to buyLook for dried sweet corn, sold by a few Pennsylvania and Amish producers, sometimes labeled toasted or oven-dried. Do not substitute dried field corn, popcorn, or nixtamalized hominy corn; those need hours of cooking and taste nothing like this.
- Quantity and yieldA pint of dried corn weighs somewhere in the region of 8 to 12 oz depending on how shrivelled the kernels are, and swells to two or three times its dry bulk. The claim of eight servings is fair as a side dish, though by modern portions it may stretch only to six.
- Cooking time is too shortFive to ten minutes will not soften rehydrated dried corn even after an overnight soak. Expect 30 to 60 minutes at a bare simmer, tasting as you go; older or heavily toasted corn takes longer. The kernels should be tender and creamy, not chewy at the center.
- Keep the soaking waterThe instruction to cook in the soaking liquid is worth following — much of the corn's sweetness leaches into it. Add water as needed during the longer simmer so the pan does not scorch.
- The quick-soak substitute"Place over a kettle of hot water for two or three hours" means setting the bowl over steam to warm the corn through. A cook today would simply pour boiling water over the corn and let it stand covered for an hour or two, then extend the simmering time.
- Butter and flourTwo tablespoons butter with one of flour, stirred into the boiling pot, makes a light thickening rather than a sauce. Rub them together into a paste first so the flour does not lump.
- The dumplingsOne egg yolk, a tablespoon of milk, salt and enough flour to make a stiff paste gives only a small handful of acorn-sized dumplings — enough to garnish the dish, not to feed eight. Scale up by three or four if you want them to be the substance of the meal.
- Do not lift the lidThis is the hinge of the second method. The dumplings cook in trapped steam above the liquid as much as in it; uncovering the pot drops the temperature and leaves them raw and doughy in the middle. Make sure there is enough liquid before you put the lid on.
Drying was one way to keep sweet corn through the winter before home canning became routine, and long before freezers. Kernels were cut from tender ears, sometimes scalded first, then spread on boards or in a slow oven until hard and glassy; the toasting that happened along the way gave dried corn its distinctive nutty flavor. Dried corn was pantry food, expected on the table in months when nothing green was growing. The egg dumplings dropped into the pot are a way to stretch a modest dish into supper with an egg and a spoon of flour.