Corn Overload.....

I don't know what I was thinking when I said I want 12 dozen ears of corn from the farm. Sounded like a nice round number that I could handle. I added my family's order in and asked for 15 dozen. WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING? lol If you read the post where I did the big farm haul you will know how this all came about. It wasn't till our order came on the pickup truck that I thought I might have bit off more than I could handle. I rationalized mine isn't that much cuz my friend ordered way more. When we got to my house and portioned out my order and 6 bags with corn sat in my garage, I had a moment of panic. But then I thought Hey Ive done massive prep at fine restaurants for parties bigger than all this. True I didn't do it alone but heck this was just corn right? Most gets composted anyway. 

WRONG! lol. And so I plunged in the next day. I started shucking and blanching away. In between Id toss big buckets of husks into my compost bin outside.....in the rain I might add lol. I haven't felt well the last day or so but figured it was just allergies. Um NO . Seems Ive got a cold or something and pushing hard to process all this and in and out of the house in the rain.....has not helped.

(The farmer told me the easiest way to shuck corn is to feel for the end of the ear. Take a knife and slice it at that point. Most of the husk will peel away real easy then. It does work, I was flying thru shucking all by myself.)I kept plugging away at the massive pile of corn and finally at about 9 dozen or so I said ...I quit. I called family and asked if they wanted the rest. I knew I still had to process all this and I just couldn't deal with any more corn. I still have other things out in the garage to deal with after this.

And so last nite after all the blanching was done, I cut up enough corn into coblets to fill 3 gallon freezer bags. There's only two of us here so I'm sure it will be enough for the yr. Sadly I now have to clean out a shelf in the freezer cuz there's no room. I didn't expect this corn till next month. So now Ill be going crazy trying to find room for all this.  

 I cut off all the kernels from one pan of the corn. As you can see in my pictures theres two piled high with several dozen ears still. And there was one half tray not filled yet. The half tray I cut up into coblets.

The blanching water smelled good tho and since I had decided to make corn cob stock later with the leftover cobs, I tossed them back in that water as I cut. I also scraped off any milk on each cob before throwing it in that water. After one pan tho it was late and  I wasn't feeling well so I just turned the water on under the cobs to cook awhile and had something to eat. I ended up going to bed very early cuz I was sick. 

(Corn cob stock)

Next morning I started in heating the Pressure canner up and getting my jars ready too. I took all the cobs from the water and tasted it . YUM very nice, just like sweet corn so I heated it up. I decided I would use this stock instead of boiling water to can the corn with. It would add a lot of flavor. Ive read where sometimes the juice gets caramelized from canning so I added about a tbsp. of Fruit Fresh to the stock. I figured it might help with that and surely couldn't hurt it. Its just an acid which help keeps things from going bad anyway. One of my friends has a yummy freezer corn recipe that I'm going to use for the rest of that stack...but I decided to try to make the jarred corn just as good. 

So for each pt. jar I added a pat of butter, I topped it with the corn kernels. You pack it loosely in the jar, not really hard. Once I was ready to can it I poured a ladle or so of the corn stock thru a strainer into my jar. Run a knife around the edges and in the middle a bit to mix it up and remove bubbles. If it needs more stock, then top it up to a half inch from the top. Then I wipe the rims of the jar real good and put the lids on. From this pan of corn I was able to get 24 pts. of corn. So Ill be pressure canning them in two batches.  

 The rest I put in plastic freezer bags using my friends recipe. Sadly I blanched all the corn before I read her recipe. She cut off raw corn and then did the recipe. It should still be good cuz the main part, scraping the corn, I still did. That's where all the good flavor is. 

 Today I cooked the second batch of corn cobs and made stock from that. I strained it and ended up with 5qts. I'm going to try it in my clam chowder. And I read that you can make corn cob jelly from it too. I don't have time to do that right now so at least its canned till I am able to do that.

I just know I'm tired and I still have two boxes of peaches and two boxes of tomatoes to do. lol. I only wish I wasn't sick.
 * Pts. of corn were pressure canned at 11lbs for 55minutes.
Corn cob stock was pressure canned at 11lbs. for 20min.

Update: This yr. I think Im going to use some of that corn cob stock when I can the corn. I used all the milk and juices from it. But now that Im opening them to use the top color looks a bit off cuz I think there wasn't enough liquid. I just scraped that off and used the rest, Its fine. But this yr. I dont want to have to do that so Ill use corn cob stock to top the jars before canning.