How to Freeze Sweet Corn

My family absolutely loves to eat sweet corn. Every time I make it, I am astonished by the quantity that little mouths can eat. But, of course, the season for eating fresh homegrown sweet corn is much too short. And so, the best option is to freeze corn to eat as my mom used to say “when the snow flies.” Of course, my girls don’t think that we really get snow around here because we didn’t much last winter. Nevertheless, having corn in the freezer to eat later is wonderful!

My sister-in-law sent me a text last week to ask when I wanted to freeze corn this year. Considering that I have been sewing almost constantly the past couple of weeks to fill an order, and the fact that I start homeschooling next week, this week seemed the best time. As it turned out, my sewing project wasn’t completed until Wednesday because my customer needed to add a few more items to the order.

I desperately need to clean the house, and I have promised Ellie that I will help her deliver flower arrangements this week…but today (Thursday) we “worked” corn. When I woke up, I felt so overwhelmed by everything that I was nearly in tears. But, as it turned out, we had a really wonderful day.

Dad had picked 10 dozen ears of corn yesterday from the field and put them in the cooler. It makes me so happy to know where our food is grown. In this case, the corn was not from our garden, but from my brother’s field on my parents’ farm. He grows organic sweet corn to sell at the local farmers’ market and to a few restaurants and local food co-op. (In the picture below, you can see the corn patch behind the broccoli that he planted a few weeks ago.)

When we got to my parents’ house this morning, Dad took the girls with him out to the cooler to get the corn that he had picked yesterday. They had dressed up for the occasion today decked out in vintage bonnets and apron. Right now, they love pretending to be Mary and Laura from the LIttle House books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is so fun that I have so many clothes that they can dress up in to play.

I, honestly, had no idea how I was going to get all of that corn into the freezer by myself today. Dad had to leave to go take care of some business matters, and my Mom wasn’t feeling well. Fortunately, my sister-in-law said that she could come over to help. One of my nephews showed up to help, too, and with everyone working, it did not take long to get the corn husked and silked. And then my sister-in-law offered to let us come over to her house to use her lovely, large kitchen to cook and cream the corn. It turned out to be a really special day.

How to Freeze Corn

1) Remove the husks and silk.

2. Remove any damage caused by worms and bugs.

This corn was organically grown, and so dealing with worms is to be expected. But I would much rather have to remove worms from the end of every ear than to eat corn that has been sprayed with a pesticide many times before I eat it!

3. Remove the silk.

Ordinarily, the silk is removed with a small hand held brush. However, because my family and extended family freeze so much corn every summer, my extended family invested in this amazing contraption that washes the corn and removes the silk in an amazingly efficient manner. Someone feeds the corn into one end, and brushes inside of it remove the silk, and a steady stream of water supplied by a garden hose wash any silk and dirt away. The corn then drops through a hole on the other end, ready to process. It is such a time saver!

Here is the corn clean and ready to cook!

4. Bring water to a boil and place corn in hot water. Bring water back to a rolling boil. Let boil a minute or so.

5. Remove corn from hot water and place in ice water bath, replacing water and ice as necessary to chill corn.

6. Cut corn off of cob with a knife or a creamer such as you see in the picture.

Note: I do not own such a lovely tool—this one belongs to my brother and sister-in-law. I have always cut mine off of the cob with a knife previously; however, I think that I will need to invest in one of these corn creamers for future use! I discovered that by changing the placement of the blade, we could achieve the result of cut kernels along with the creamed corn to make it exactly the way I like it!

This little piece is adjustable. I pushed the little metal piece up at the screw so that the corn kernels were cut off rather than just being creamed as this setting was doing.

7. Place the corn in whatever containers you want to use for freezing and put it in the freezer!

Ellie asked what she could do to help and so I asked her to write the contents and date on the quart-size freezer bags. Because she hasn’t officially learned to write yet, I wrote down what I wanted her to copy onto the bags.

She wearied before writing on all of the bags, and so I had to finish writing on the bags, and I filled them while my sister-in-law creamed the corn. When I brought the corn home to put in the freezer, my husband said, “Is that all?” He obviously grew up in the city and has absolutely no idea how much time and effort goes into freezing that quantity of corn!

I was very pleased to have 21 quarts of corn to put into the freezer. And I could never have managed to get it all done without the help of my family. I hope that we can put that much again in the freezer in another week or so, but if not, I am absolutely thrilled to have this much corn in the freezer this year.

Do you have memories of freezing corn? Is this something that your family still does? I would love to hear your memories of preserving food or what you currently do. Just let me know in the comments!