Freezing corn 101

Either grow corn yourself or find a place to buy good quality corn at the peak of ripeness. Our neighbor sells it for $2.50 a dozen delivered on my door step. I can't afford to grow it at that price and convenience. We bought 2o dozen and did nine dozen tonight. Here we have it all cleaned and the quality control cat has come in to say we did a good job. All the husks go to the goats for a treat.

We blanch our corn and other veggie we freeze outside for two reasons. First, the propane cooker heats the water up much faster and I can then use a bigger pot, this one holds 1 1/2 dozen ears at a time. Secondly, then I don't have all that humidity in the house. Put the ears in boiling water and start counting as soon as they are in. We blanch for 7 minutes, other people might tell you a different amount of time but this has always worked wonderfully for us.

After seven minutes take it out with a tongs and plunge it in cold water to stop the cooking action. I change the water after every batch so that is is always icy cold.

Once the corn is cool lay it on a bath towel to drain. If you take the corn straight out of the water and cut it, the end product has a lot of water in it. I don't think it freezes as nice with the extra water in it.

Cut the corn off the cobs. This cutter is from the American Corn Cutter Co. The box says that you can cut a year's worth of corn in less than an hour and they are not kidding. Our neighbor said that her mother can cut corn off the cob really fast with a knife, but she went and bought one of these and is going to challenge her mom this year to see if it is faster. I think it just has to be as three or four cobs can be cut a minute, yes a minute.

This is about a third of what we froze. It is all ready to go in the bags. After filling the bags with corn and before closing them squeeze out as much air as possible. Close the top of the bag about 9/10th of the way, squeeze the bag and quickly close the rest of the way.

Bagged and ready to go in the freezer. Dancer wrote the year on the bags and she made the double zeros on each one a different picture. If you don't have any small freezer bags put it in regular Ziploc bags and then put the smaller bags in a larger bag.

I can hardly wait for winter to eat these!