corn

15 Fresh Corn Recipes You'll Swoon Over

Marla Walters — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 10:00:07 +0000

Corn is a vegetable that just feels like summer, doesn't it? Nothing beats an ear of corn, especially when it's dripping with melting butter and salt. But here are 15 fresh corn recipes to use up that bounty in delicious, frugal ways.

1. Mexican Street Food

Called elotes, this street food is almost obscenely delicious. Anytime you slather something in chili, lime, and cheese, you have my full attention. Yes, it's messy, but it's also delicious. I use light mayonnaise, and I like to add a little cumin.

2. On the Grill

One of my good friends turned me on to this method of grilling corn on the barbeque. Boy, is this ever good alongside a ribeye steak!

3. Creamed Corn

Homemade creamed corn is completely different from canned. You won't even recognize it, and I bet you eat every bite. Please do not leave out the chives, which this recipe lists as "optional." I think they add a lot.

4. Fresh Corn Salad

Looking for a light lunch? Check out this Southwestern quinoa salad. It also makes a great potluck dish.

5. Vegan Corn Chowder

You will love this creamy corn chowder, which is made without dairy. The recipe gives instructions for how to use the "milk" from corn kernels, which gives the chowder a creamy texture. It also uses coconut milk, but don't worry — it isn't overly sweet.

6. Fritters

These fresh corn fritters are absolutely perfect with shrimp and some coleslaw on the side. An ice cold beer to sip doesn't hurt, either.

7. Fresh Corn Salsa

I like those little bowl-shaped tortilla chips with this black bean salsa recipe because they hold more of it. This is a terrific appetizer, but also is great in a fish taco. I confess that I substituted jalapeno pepper because habaneros or Scotch bonnets are much too hot for my taste.

8. Corn Pancakes

Got Bisquick in your pantry? Make up some pancake batter, and add some fresh corn. This is great with maple syrup.

9. Corn Waffles

Same baking mix, even snazzier in a waffle iron. Try them with sour cream and salsa for dinner for a fun change.

10. Make a Sauce

Plain ol' chicken, or a piece of fish get more glamorous when you add a fresh corn sauce. I like this as it is, but it's also yummy with a little Tabasco.

11. Vegetarian "Three Sisters" Stew

Native Americans figured out that squash, beans, and corn grow well together. Cut up some acorn or kabocha squash; add a can of drained beans (I like pintos) and two cups of fresh corn off the cob. Add some vegetable broth and simmer until squash is tender.

12. Ice Cream

Ice cream? Sure, why not. Corn ice cream is a popular flavor in Mexico. It makes sense, when you think about it, as fresh corn is sweet and starchy.

13. Fancy Cornbread

This is a great cheat. Buy a box of Jiffy Cornbread mix. To the regular recipe on the box, add a half-cup of fresh corn kernels, ¼ cup of shredded, sharp, cheddar cheese, and two tablespoons of bacon bits. Bake as directed. Slather with butter.

14. Corn Salad

Doesn't corn look sportier when it's a little charred? It also gives it a smokey flavor, which is so good in this grilled corn salad. I added some diced chicken breast to mine to "make it a meal."

15. Corn Pizza

Corn on pizza? Sure, it's delicious. I use a ready-made crust and jarred alfredo sauce to keep things easy. Roll out the crust, add alfredo sauce, and fresh corn from the cob. I like to add some sliced sausage and a little sage. Bake according to package directions and serve.

What other frugal spins can you put on fresh corn? Share with us in the comments!

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This article is from Marla Walters of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

15 Delicious Ways to Use Canned Corn

Marla Walters — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 17:59:22 +0000

Whenever I see canned corn on sale, into my basket the cans go. I think it's a pantry "essential." Besides being versatile, corn is a vegetable that kids and picky eaters like, too. My grandmother raised five "picky eaters" and once told me that corn was the only vegetable my father would willingly eat. (See also: Canned Foods That Go the Distance)

Below are fifteen recipes using corn. In any of the recipes which call for frozen corn, simply substitute drained, canned corn. Another trick I use is that if the recipe calls for less corn than I need from the can, I just put the extra in a ziplock baggie and freeze it. From there, I toss it into soups or, when defrosted, casseroles.

1. Homemade Creamed Corn

Why on earth make your own creamed corn? Doesn't it already come in a can? Well, of course it does, but that stuff cannot compare to home-made. And it's easy — you can even make it in your crock-pot. (See also: Best Slow Cookers)

2. Dip

For watching football, a movie, or a potluck, this Fiesta Corn Dip is great. Just substitute canned corn for frozen.

3. Succotash

Sufferin' Succotash! Am I dating myself with this Sylvester-the-cat reference? Succotash is a dish usually consisting mainly of corn and lima beans. However, I despise lima beans, so I substitute green beans or edamame.

4. Salad

Speaking of edamame, this Edamame and Corn Salad is delicious alongside a grilled pork chop.

5. Three-Can Salad

Didn't everyone's mother make three-can salad? Drain one can of corn, one can of black or white beans, and one can of artichoke hearts, chopped. Add Italian dressing. Done! (See also: Cheap and Healthy Black Bean Recipes)

6. Fritters

Corn fritters, or pancakes, are a kid-friendly favorite. Big kids love them, too!

7. Chowder

Did somebody mention bacon? Well, corn and bacon are great together, particularly in Bacon-Corn Chowder.

8. Corn Pudding

If you are in need of some comfort food, here is an easy recipe for Corn Pudding.

9. Kid Food

Kid food, no recipe required. Make (boxed) macaroni and cheese and add a half cup of drained, canned corn, one sliced hot dog, and stir well. Sprinkle a little grated cheese on top of that. (See also: How to Cut Waste When Feeding Kids)

10. Black Beans and Corn

Have you ever made your own tortilla chips? They are so easy, and so is this delicious Cilantro, Black Bean, and Corn Salad.

11. Ham Casserole

Last year I was determined to make a Christmas ham. I did, and while it was great, I had so many ham leftovers! This Hearty Ham Casserole would have come in very handy. I'm bookmarking it for the next time I bake a ham.

12. Zucchini

I have had this recipe in my arsenal since the days when I lived in California, and needed to do something WITH ALL THAT DARNED ZUCCHINI. Corn and Zucchini Medley goes with anything...chicken, fish, ribs, you name it. It is an easy, effective "use up zucchini" recipe, and inexpensive. (See also: The Produce Worker's Guide to Storing Fruits and Veggies)

13. Tomalito

This takes some time and effort, but wow, is it worth it. Sweet Corn Tomalito is just fantastic alongside fajitas, tacos, and ribs. Because it is rich, you only need a little as a side dish.

14. Tomatoes

I really love it when foods LOOK pretty on a plate. Such is the case with these Corn-Stuffed Tomatoes.

15. Asian Fritters

I know I already gave you a corn fritter recipe — but this one is for ASIAN Corn fritters. I love the addition of the shrimp, which is optional.

Readers, anyone else have canned corn ideas?

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This article is from Marla Walters of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Less corn planted, despite ethanol

Philip Brewer — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:26:51 +0000

Prompted by high prices (driven by demand from ethanol production), farmers planted more acres of corn last year than any year since 1944. This year, though, planned acres for corn are down 8%, and soybeans are back up to normal.

That's the word from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in their Prospective Plantings, released today.

Because of where I live--central Illinois--last year's huge increase in corn planting was something I could see on a daily basis. Bicycling out in rural areas around Champaign-Urbana, I'm used to seeing soybeans in about a third of the fields. Last year, it seemed to be barely half that.

The usual ratio is a result of the crop rotation that farmers seem to use around here, planting corn two years and then planting soybeans for one year. Corn requires large amounts of (increasingly expensive) nitrogen fertilizer. Soybeans, on the other hand, add nitrogen to the soil. In addition to balancing some of the nutrient demand on the soil, switching to soybeans for a year helps with pest control. If you plant corn year after year, you can expect corn pests to get worse each year. A year of soybeans greatly improves the situation.

Last year, the agricultural radio reports were full of news (and ads) on how to grow corn for a third straight year on the same plot of land. Seeing all that corn was worrisome to me--you could point your finger in any direction and point at agricultural practices that were even more unsustainable than usual.

It seems, though, to have been a one-off move to take advantage of a record surge in corn prices. The (entirely predictable) result has been a surge in the prices of other agricultural products, and farmers are moving things back toward normal. Corn planting will still be higher than usual, but soybean planting (after a huge drop last year) is right back up to recent levels. Other grains show a mixed bag--sorghum and oats are down, barley (important for beer and scotch drinkers) is up, wheat is way up.

With things trending back toward normal, the result will probably be more of what we've been seeing lately--higher prices for agricultural commodities, leading to higher food prices. You can't figure that the current high prices are an aberration; high prices of agricultural commodities are the new normal.

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Why is it so expensive to be healthy?

Andrea Karim — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:53:46 +0000

Why are poor people in America so fat? Would you believe that farm subsidies have something to do with it?

Walmart is where lower income consumers come to shop. Why? Because you get the most bang for your buck. Walmart is also notorious for having the fattest customers. Why? It comes back to value - it turns out that unhealthiest food also gives you the most caloric bang for your buck.

Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about

I shop at a grocery store that borders on one of Seattle's ghettos. In case you are wondering, Seattle's ghettos are nothing compared to other urban ghettos. Meaning, you can safely walk through a Seattle ghetto. But that's where the majority of Seattle's urban poor live, and if you want to see food stamps in action, you should shop at my Safeway.

Food stamps are no longer in stamp form in Washington State - people are given debit cards that are referred to as "benefit cards". Benefits cards are usually easy to spot, if you are looking. But you don't have to look at a person's form of payment to know what social class they belong to - you need only look at their shopping cart, and their waistline. This is anecdotal, of course, but no doubt you've noticed this, too: poor people eat more crappy junk food than rich people.

There's a tendency in America to equate poor nutrition and subsequent obesity with a lack of education. It's familar logic: the poor aren't educated enough to work, so they stay poor. Being uneducated means that they don't know that Doritos are bad for you. Or, if you look to what a lot of us secretly think, the poor are simply too dumb to eat salad, too simple to know that Twinkies do not make a healthy meal.*

Why would someone who has so little money to spend go and spend it on packaged food? we wonder to ourselves. Don't they know what a waste of money it is to buy junk food?

We tsk tsk them in our heads. We load up our carts with loose leaf lettuce and portabella mushrooms, thinking ourselves superior for knowing better. Once we get to the checkout counter and see the total cost of our veggies, though, we probably do end up thinking: wow, it's really expensive to be healthy.

From the NY Times (via Consumerist):

As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

Bang for your buck

It is expensive to eat well, even if you are only buying raw veggies. The truth is that lower income shoppers, and other populations that live on junk food, are getting more calories per dollar than the rest of us. It's economically efficient, if tragically perverse.

The reason, as the New York Times article explains, has to do with the Farm Bill, which heavily subsidizes soybeans, corn, and wheat - three major ingredients, or sources, of many of the ingredients in junk food. The result?

[T]he real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (aka liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

So even foods that are more processed, that require more labor to produce, cost less. The article goes on to explain the origins of the Farm Bill and the detrimental, albeit unintended, effect it is having on our population.

The farm bill helps determine what sort of food your children will have for lunch in school tomorrow. The school-lunch program began at a time when the public-health problem of America’s children was undernourishment, so feeding surplus agricultural commodities to kids seemed like a win-win strategy. Today the problem is overnutrition, but a school lunch lady trying to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, however, the inspector smiles and the reimbursements flow. The farm bill essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce.

Do click over and read the rest of the article. The author gives a good breakdown of calorie-per-dollar-spent between carrots and junk food.

It ends on a hopeful note, claiming that the resurgence in organic farming and local produce, combined with consumer demands and the American ideal of a free market economy, may give us a chance to reclaim our farming heritage and our health. I'm not sure that I'm so optimistic about our chances for revamping what seems like extremely complicated and pork-filled legislation.

(Picture by Colin Palmer)

*Because so many people keep reading this sentence and thinking that I actually believe that the poor are dumb, I'd like to point out that the sentence is meant to generalize about the way that many wealthy Americans think about the poor, NOT THE WAY THAT I FEEL ABOUT THE POOR. My god, people, do you really think a web site dedicated to helping readers learn how to save money would feature a writer who loathes the poor? GET A GRIP. And for the record, I'm pretty fat myself, so it's not like I'm making fun of anyone for eating badly.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: