Last Updated on August 14, 2023

I bet many of you, like me today, are picking up corn at the farm stand or farmer’s market,

which is a good thing, because corn close to the source (as opposed to trucked miles from the farm) is fresher. But there is a problem with corn – the second you pick it, its natural sugars start to turn to starch. I bet you have bitten into “fresh” corn and thought to yourself, wow that tastes bland and un-corny, more like a potato than corn.

beautiful shucked corn

So the ideal scenario is:

Plant a cornfield in your back yard. Then when you want to eat corn, put on a pot of water, put on your sneakers, go out to the field and pick some corn. Run back to the house, all the while shucking the corn as you run, pop the corn in the pot, cook it and eat it right away.

If you do not have a cornfield in your backyard you are at a slight disadvantage. But at least you can buy it locally and cook it immediately. However, if you wait until the afternoon to pick it up at the farmers market, that corn will have been sitting out in the hot sun for hours, which hastens the  sugar to starch transformation. I always thought, well, if they just pile it on the shelf at the farmer’s market, I can leave it out when I get home for a few more hours until I cook it…

wrong.

So, buy your corn locally if you can, buy it as early in the day as possible, and if you are not going to cook it right away, get it into the fridge.

There is nothing better than fresh corn.

fresh grilled corn

p.s they have developed super sweet corn which has been bred to stay sweeter longer, but I am not a fan, I think it tastes more like sugar and less like corn – that is just one girl’s opinion.