Author: Brandia Deatherage | Published: July 27th, 2010

    During the month of July, there’s typically enough sweet corn in Beaufort County to adorn every dinner table, every night. If you’re lucky, you either know somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody who grows it in their garden, and you’re handed off a boxful to store in your crisper. If not, you can buy three cobs from Walmart for under $1, since local crops are thriving. This summer’s perfect formula of direct sunlight and heavy rain yielded cornfields of a rich, vibrant green—stalks standing tall; nothing at all like the drought of 1998-2002, which kept the stalks brown and brittle.

    Personally, I never tire of eating my corn like an antique typewriter, finishing line by line of the kernels. Nevertheless, the chunk of fatback I have in my fridge reminded me of a recipe for authentic Creamed Corn, that reveals how other recipes cheat on the process, and muddle the true flavor. This recipe was handed down through my mother, Lynn, from my late great-grandmother Lois Womble, from Winston Salem.

    From what I hear, Lois was a fantastic Southern cook. So fantastic, in fact, that her son, my grandfather, refuses to enjoy anything other than Southern cookin'--even Mexican food *gasp*! I’m sure this is a familiar sentiment among men, but in his opinion, nobody can cook like his momma. Every day growing up, my grandfather, his mom and his two brothers would have some variation of this meal: fried chicken, sweet tea, creamed corn, fried okra and yellow-cake with chocolate icing. With that lineup, I can kind of understand his hesitation to branch out.

    The beauty of Lois’s recipe for Creamed Corn is its simplicity and self-sufficiency. According to my great-grandmother, there’s absolutely no need to add cream to make Creamed Corn, since corn is perfectly capable of surrendering its own milk, right from the cob. To ‘milk’ the corn, you hold the corn steady and press a butter knife down the sides of the raw, bare cob several times, pushing out the corn milk into the pan. The corn milk comes from the juicy, creamy roots of the kernels left attached to corn cobs after you cut the actual kernels off. It’s sweeter, more velvety and much more corn-flavored than any dairy product. I love the idea of getting the most out of the food God provides. By the time you’re done milking the corn your arm will be tired and the corn should be as bare as a bone cleaned by a greedy dog.

    Also, according to my great-grandmother, it’s not necessary, like people think, to add sugar to creamed corn—as long as the corn is in season. You can add a small teaspoon of white granulated sugar if your corn isn’t sweet, but I haven’t noticed a need for that lately. In fact, Lois’s recipe calls for just four ingredients: corn, fatback, salt and pepper. Make sure your pork is fatty enough to produce enough drippings. It’s that easy. And it’s this good:



Ingredients

small chunks of fatback
4 corn cobs
salt
pepper

Directions

Fry the fatback in frying pan
Cut the kernels from the raw corn cobs
Milk the corn (directions above)
Add the corn and corn milk to pan
Season with salt and pepper
Cook on medium heat until done


    This article provided courtesy of our sister site: Beaufort County Now

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