Tips for Freezing Corn

It's that time of year that keeps me busy with canning and freezing. It takes a bit of time to do this but in the middle of winter, it tastes so good to eat food knowing it came from my garden or the farm stand!

Since many of you many be freezing corn soon, I thought I'd share some of my tips & tricks to make the job a little easier. Many hands makes the job easier so the kids and I work as a team to get this done. They work on husking the corn outside while I prep the kitchen for blanching, cutting & bagging the corn.

They didn't want their photo taken since they were in PJ's (lol) but they are set up in the shade of the garage with garbage bags to husk right into and listening to a radio blasting some music!

For those who have never froze corn, once you husk the corn you will need to blanch it which is simply dropping the ears of corn into boiling water for about 3 minutes. From there, you want to put the corn into cold water to stop the cooking process. Then you cut off the corn and put it into freezer bags (I use quart size). That's it!!!

This is a photo of my set up. (click on it to enlarge) It looks confusing but I actually have a good system down so I can multitask. Another tip, because corn cobs are heavy, use the plastic grocery store bags to gather empty cobs rather than using a huge trash bag (the bag will be too heavy to lift otherwise).

Here's my tip for making it easier to cut the corn off:

If you own an angel food cake pan, this is just the center piece that I put in the bottom of my bowl. It holds the ear of corn in place making it quick to simultaneously cut & turn the ear of corn. It also holds it above all the corn.

My other handy tip is on cooling the corn. You can start off with cold water, even adding ice to it but after a few dozen ears of corn, the water heats up quickly. I drop ice packs in the water to keep it colder longer and just rotate them out with other ones I have in the freezer as they start thawing.