Photo: itaci (Shutterstock)
If you know me, you will know that I love corn very much. This year I grew my own corn for the first time and although it is a bit smaller than the ears of wheat you see in the grocery store, it’s still sweet and juicy, and I wanted to get as much flavor out of those cute cobs of mine as possible . So I made some corn milk.
I’ve always been the pistons milked with my knife and occasionally boiled it in water to a golden corn stockbut recently I used milk as a corn flavor extraction method and it works very well.
All you have to do is put your used flasks in a stock pot and add enough whole milk to just cover them (about one cup per flask should do the trick, but don’t get hung up on strict measurements). I also add 1/4 teaspoon of salt for each pair of cobs to balance out the sweetness and bring out the corn flavor. Heat the milk over medium heat until it starts to steam and bubbles start to form, then reduce the heat (and take it off the stove if you have an electric stove), cover the saucepan and let it steep to room temperature. Finally put the whole thing in the fridge overnight. Remove the pistons the next day and you will get corn milk (not to be confused with this other one, much sweeter corn milkwhich is very good, but a completely different animal).
Corn milk tastes exactly how you hope it will – creamy and cheesy. It’s sweet, but only as sweet as your corn, and perfect for baking and cooking (but only if the things you bake and cook could benefit from a little extra graininess).
You can use corn milk in recipes just like regular milk without corn flakes – without having to change the quantities. The uses for corn milk are many and far-reaching, but my first impetus is to make corn ice cream, an incredibly underrated type of ice cream. It would also be good in bread pudding, french toast, egg casseroles and scrambled eggs, quick breads, or an old-fashioned hot milk cake. If you can do it with regular milk, you can do it with corn milk (and you probably should).
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