Canning Sweet Corn

We harvested the last half row of Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn.  We always know its ready when the silk turns dark brown.  The ears are snapped off of the stalk and the stalk is tossed over the fence where the cows, goats and chickens make quick work of the corn stalks.  I always eat one ear raw out in the garden.  So sweet and fresh!  The rest I brought inside.

We shuck the corn, trying to pull most of the silk off and put the shucks in a big bucket.  I use a knife to cut off some worm-damage, but really it's not much.  We'll throw the husks and parts of the cob to the animals as well.  What they don't eat, we compost.  Then I use a vegetable brush to brush off any remaining silk.  They're small ears, but they are pretty.  They taste sweet, too.

Here's the corn all ready to process.  Not a lot, but it'll be good for our purposes.

Using a sharp chef's knife, I cut the corn off the cob.  Then I use a butter knife to scrape the cob, getting the 'milk' and remaining corn off the cob.

A close up shot of the corn cut off the cob.

All the corn is put into a big pot and a cup of water is added for every 2 cups of corn.  We found a recipe for Mexican Style Corn and we'll be following it.

We cut up onions, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers and salt and added into the pot.  This is all stirred up and is brought to a boil.

We use a canning funnel and ladle the hot corn mixture into the 10 pint jars, filling them up while leaving 1 inch headspace.  The tops are cleaned and the lids are put on with the rings added, finger tight.

We added the pint jars to the pressure canner.  Ours fits all ten jars.  We did have a little remaining, but we froze a quart zip loc bag full.  We'll eat that as a side dish at some point.

We can it at 10 pounds of pressure for 85 minutes.  The timer is started once the little weight on top starts rocking.  Once 85 minutes is done and the timer goes off, the canner is removed from the heat.  The jars are pulled out when the pressure drops and the satisfying sound of the lids popping echoes in the kitchen as they cool.

We'll stack these up in the pantry.  First, we did try the Mexican Corn as this was our first time to make it.  The corn thickened up after cooking.  The onions gave it nice flavor, but the jalapeno peppers took the flavor up several notches!  I remember as a kid eating Mexican Corn.  I think Green Giant made it in little cans.  Always enjoyed it back then.  We'll enjoy it now when we open a jar of it!