The Corn Shucking Hack That Makes Removing The Silk A Breeze
There's nothing like truly fresh corn picked right off the stalk in the late summer. Alternatively sweet and crunchy, it's perfect simply boiled or steamed and served with a bit of high-quality butter and maybe a pinch of salt. It's also sublime in all kinds of summery corn dishes like warm grilled corn and edamame succotash, baked up in a corn souffle, or scraped off the cob into Mexican street corn salad.
It's important to get your corn as fresh as possible because it will lose its natural sugar in just 12 hours if it's not properly stored, according to Iowa State. If you can buy your cobs at a local farm stand or farmers market, you'll have a much better chance of getting peak sweetness. The trouble is, you'll have to shuck your ears when you buy them from the farmer. Pulling the green leaves off isn't so hard, but it can be a pain to get all the corn silk strands off of the cob if you're picking them away one by one. The good news is that there's an easier way. All you need to remove all the cornsilk from an ear of corn is a stiff-bristle vegetable brush or even a clean toothbrush. With just a few strokes, you can sweep all the cornsilk away without damaging any precious kernels.
How to brush your corn
Americans eat tons of corn, which is no surprise since the plant is native to North America. In fact, we've eaten nearly 12 billion bushels in 2022 and 2023 so far according to Statista — that's a lot of shucking. In fact, corn grows in nearly all US states, so unless you're actually allergic to corn you probably grew up shucking corn on the back porch in the summer. If you're the corn shucker in your house, you already know that the tedious part is really removing the corn silk, which seems to stick to everything. Instead of trying to use your fingers to get the corn silk off, you can just grab a vegetable brush. Sweep the corn around on all sides with the stiff-bristle brush and it will pick up all the delicate strands of silk in less than 30 seconds. If you have a stack of corn to shuck, it's a huge time saver. Keep a brush handy for sweeping away any corn silk and you'll be the fastest shucker in town.
Even a fairly stiff brush should not damage your corn kernels using this method. You don't need to press down particularly hard, just give all the surface area of your corn a sweep until you don't see any more silk strands. If you don't already have a vegetable brush for washing things off in the sink, there are tons of different models available online and at kitchen stores, and you don't need to spend any more than $5 to $10.
Which brush to buy
You can certainly buy a brush that's made just for brushing corn, which has bristles that are a little bit tacky so that they'll stick better to the corn silk, but any vegetable brush will do the job — this will help you avoid filling up your kitchen cabinets with single-use gadgets. If you don't want to shop for another kitchen gadget, and you don't have a dedicated vegetable brush, you can also use a toothbrush as long as it's never been used (nobody wants toothpaste and tooth germs on their corn), which is also great to keep by the sink for brushing the dirt off of mushrooms.
There are a lot of schools of thought as to how to shuck an ear of corn, and lots of state farm contests to prove it. In fact, in the 1920s and '30s, corn shucking contests were serious business, according to The State Journal-Register. While there are no prizes to be awarded for the fastest shucker in your home kitchen, you've still got better things to do than pick each strand of silk off the cobs. Keep the brush trick in mind when corn season comes around, which is only once a year in the U.S., and you'll be golden (just like your corn). And if you're a parent and you're keeping up the tradition of letting the kids do the work, hand them a couple of brushes before they start peeling, and hopefully, your ears will come back silk free.