Summer time on the East Coast means that people go absolutely nuts over fresh corn. Seriously, our local grocery store is running a special on corn for 29¢ an ear and we saw plenty of folks carting away several bags full of corn. We’ll admit that fresh corn is pretty tasty, especially when you have to settle for the frozen kind the rest of the year – so here’s a recipe that you can use some of that corn with.
We decided to make scalloped corn, based on a recent recipe in the New York Times. It’s a casserole from the American heartland that takes all the healthiness of corn and buries it under a delicious creamy sauce. Because this scalloped corn uses a nice white sauce and fresh vegetables, it’s a more upscale version than what you might be served when you visit your aunt in the Midwest, but it’s still a nice comfort food.
Here’s what we used:
- 5 tablespoons of butter
- Flour
- 2 cups of milk
- An onion
- A red bell pepper
- 6 ears of corn
- An egg
- Ritz crackers
We first de-husked all of our corn and cut the kernels off each ear.
We also diced our onion and chopped up our bell pepper …
… and cooked them with 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium-high heat for 5 minutes, until they were softened.
Then we added in the corn, along with plenty of salt and pepper, and cooked all these veggies for another 2 minutes before taking them off the stove.
We also made a white sauce by melting 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat, whisking in 3 tablespoons of flour for about a minute, then adding in 2 cups of milk, one half-cup at a time, while whisking continuously. We let this mixture come to a simmer and then cooked it over low heat for 5 minutes, whisking it every so often until it thickened.
Once the vegetables and the white sauce were done, we mixed them together with a spatula and stirred in one beaten egg.
Then we poured all of this into a greased casserole dish.
To make a crumb topping, we took a sleeve of Ritz crackers and crushed them up by hand …
… and poured them over the top of our corn (you can add another 2 tablespoons of butter in with the crumbs to make them extra crispy, but we figured this dish didn’t need any more butter). Then we baked our casserole at 375°F for 30 minutes.
And here’s what our scalloped corn looked like when it was done:
If you couldn’t tell, this was a very creamy dish, what with all the butter and milk. The crackers on top made the casserole nice and crunchy once it came out of the oven, and of course the fresh corn was delicious. We ate this all by itself for dinner one night and trust us, it was plenty filling. We know people usually like to eat their fresh corn straight off the cob, but if you’re looking to do something different with corn this summer, try out this upgraded version of a classic casserole.