The Taste of the Genuine

Everybody loves sweet corn, it's the quintessential summertime vegetable. Preserving corn was one of the very first foods that I learned to put up. Back then we froze our corn, which is the way that most home preservation families still do it; even among families who can they will still freeze their corn. Frozen corn tastes almost exactly like fresh off the cob, definitely worth the trouble. However, I no longer freeze corn. Once we made the decision that we wanted to move away from reliance on electricity and freezers we needed to come up with a different variety of corn to grow. Almost without exception the corn you buy at a grocery store or Farmer's Market is one of the modern super sweet hybrid varieties with the sugar enhancement gene. These types, Incredible being the most common one grown here, don't lend themselves to home canning as the sugar content caramelizes when canned resulting in brown corn. We finally settled on Country Gentleman, a late 19th century shoepeg variety.
The kernels aren't in rows but are placed hodge podge all over the cob. The taste is different than what I'm used to but we knew that going into it, we are exchanging hyper-sweet for a more realistic corn taste. Because the sugar in any corn begins to turn into starch the minute the corn is picked we strive to get our corn into the canning jars within an hour of being picked. I try to have the exact number of cobs picked to fill the 7 jars. Today it was 46. The children immediately begin to husk it and pick the silk off (we save the silk too). Then the kernels are cut off with a knife, there are specialized tools for this but I've not found any that I thought were worth the money and hassle.
For each 4 cups of corn I mix in 1 teaspoon of salt and then the corn goes into the quart jar to be immediately covered with boiling water. So we go, jar by jar, until the 7 are done. They are then pressure canned for 85 minutes at 10 pounds pressure.

When I open the jars I will sometimes add 1 tablespoon of brown sugar to each quart, this is completely unnecessary but I think it will help ease the transition to this more humble repast. I think we'll get about 70 quarts of corn this year, interspersed with corn we are still canning carrots, both plain and candied. Though I realize that canning corn isn't something that you're going to sit up at night fantasizing about, you might want to file this information away so if/when the day comes that you do need to try it you'll know how to go about it.