I have tried parched sweet corn and liked it.
Parched Sweet Corn
1/4 c. bacon drippings
2 c. dried sweet corn
Salt
Heat bacon drippings in heavy 3-quart saucepan. Add 1 kernel corn and heat until sizzling. Add corn. Cover. Cook over medium high to high heat, shaking constantly until corn pops and is lightly browned. Turn into colander to drain off excess grease. Drain on paper towels. Season with salt while warm.
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Found at:
http://organictobe.org/index.php/cat...-logsdon-blog/
From Gene Logsdon:
Sweet Corn From the Garden - In December
It can get cold enough to freeze spit before it hits the ground in a
northern Ohio December, but we are still enjoying corn from the
garden even as the jingle bells ripen on the evergreen trees.
Sweet corn? Yep, but not sweet corn the way you usually think of it.
I love parched corn and why this delicacy seems to have gotten lost
in the endless forests of corn in the midwest is a downright shame.
Parched corn is easy to come by too, and if it is not lower in
calories and cholesterol than other snack foods, don’t tell me
because I am going to keep on eating it anyway.
We deliberately plant more white sweet corn (Silver Queen) in our
late June planting than we can eat as roasting ears. We let the
surplus hang in the garden through the fall, drying on the stalks.
Sometimes we harvest the ears after they are almost dry and hang them
in the garage. But it is less work just to let the ears remain on the
dead cornstalks through winter and fetch a few ears as needed. As
they dry on the cob, sweet corn kernels wrinkle considerably. In fact
the sweeter the corn, the more it wrinkles. Once dry, the corn lasts
at least until next harvest. There may be some advantage to leaving
the corn in the garden over winter because hanging in a warm
building, it can get so dry that it won’t parch as well. It is better
in any event to leave the kernels on the cob until you want to parch
them. The kernels shell off by hand very easily, at least with Silver
Queen.
Parching sweet corn is about like popping popcorn. Put a very light
skim of olive oil in any pan you have a cover for, or a skillet you
can fit a cover over, and add a layer or two of dried corn kernels.
Heat up a kitchen stove burner or the top of your wood-burning stove
and keep agitating the pan on the hot surface so the corn won’t burn.
The kernels will scorch rather easily, so you have to make sure the
stove top is not too hot and to continuously shuffle the pan or
skillet over the burner to keep the corn moving around inside. A
older-type corn popper with a stirrer that you can crank works well.
The kernels sometimes pop audibly, especially if they get too hot,
and a kernel will actually pop out of the pan occasionally if no
cover is used. But the kernels, unlike popped corn, only swell up as
if they have suddenly developed weight problems. Salt them to taste
or not at all, if salt is a no-no for you.
My fondness for parched corn began because I like to eat a little
something snacky and crunchy with my bourbon as I do happy hour after
work— happy as in cracking up at how the human race managed somehow
to do something today even loonier than it did yesterday. I went
through spells of potato chips, pretzels, peanuts, and crackers, only
to be overwhelmed by too much salt or grease or oil or other
ingredient I don’t even want to know the origin of. While I prefer
white corn like Silver Queen, yellow sweet corn works just as well.
Among parched corn gourmets there is general agreement that older
varieties like Yellow Bantam, Sunglow, and Silver Queen are better
than the newer super sweet varieties because the former have that
more pronounced corn taste we appreciate. But any sweet corn will be
satisfactory. I also like Silver Queen because the dried kernels are
larger than dried yellow corn kernels and therefore are larger when
parched, and to me crunchier. I have not tried to parch regular field
corn, but presume it would not be as tasty as sweet corn.
Surplus corn? No problem. Give your friends who “have everything” a
quart of parched corn for Christmas. I bet they’ve never received
that before.
