hello this is chef john from food wishes calm with bay corn that's right if you
like bacon and you like corn you are absolutely gonna love this cheesy
jalapeno and bacon spike creamed corn which I'm officially presenting as a
side dish but truth be told I actually ate this all by itself and it really was
magnificent so I think next to like a salad this would be a great main course
also and by the way other than the bacon this is pretty much a vegetarian dish so
with that let's go ahead and get started by adding a half a pound of bacon to
this dry skillet which is over medium-high heat and the first thing
we're gonna want to do here is cook this stirring occasionally until it's almost
but not quite cooked crisp and as you'll see most of the fats gonna render out
which we will then use to cook our other ingredients in and if there's one thing
I know about other ingredients is they're cooking them in bacon fat is
almost always a great idea so like I said we'll go ahead and cook our bacon
until almost crisp and while we're waiting for that to happen let's go
ahead and talk corn and this is one of those recipes that will work equally
well whether you shave these kernels off fresh corn or just thaw and drain some
frozen corn like I'm doing here in fact if it's early in the season the frozen
corn might actually work better since they'll be a little sweeter but either
way we're gonna need about two pounds and then what we'll do once our bacon is
almost but not quite crisp is go ahead and add about half of our corn in which
we will then lightly toast in this hot bacon fat and of course since I love to
give you options for this step you could add all the corn or none of the corn but
I like to split the difference and toast some of it just to provide a little
extra sweetness and bring out some of those subtle caramel II notes but anyway
you decide but personally like I said I like to do about half and cook it until
those kernels just start to take on a little golden brown color and then once
that happens we'll go ahead and introduce the rest of our vegetation
including a whole bunch of minced garlic as well as some sliced green onions
mostly the light and white parts and we can save those darker green parts to
garnish later and then for some beautiful bittersweet heat we will toss
in a couple diced jalapeno peppers and stir all this together and then what we
should do is cook this for about three or four minutes
or until those veggies start to soften and Sweeden up oh and you may have
noticed I didn't drain off any of that bacon fat when we cook the bacon okay I
wanted to make sure we had plenty to saute all the rest of the stuff which we
definitely did which means we can probably get rid of some of that fat now
if we want and a great trick for doing that while we're cooking with stuff
still in the pan is to just sort of push everything off to one side and then by
simply taking a wadded up paper towel and some tongs we can tilt the pan which
will have the excess oil running to that end where it can be quickly and easily
absorbed so feel free to do that at any point during the cooking process and
then the other thing we can do while our veggies are cooking is go ahead and add
our seasonings which will include some kosher salt some freshly ground black
pepper and of course the obligatory shakes of cayenne and we'll go ahead and
stir all that in and we'll continue on medium-high until we think our veggies
have cooked long enough at which point we'll go ahead and introduce our heavy
cream and by the way the recipe which inspired this actually uses mayonnaise
and sweetened condensed milk instead of cream which seemed a little overly rich
for me and what's the word I'm looking for insane so it sounds kind of funny to
say but we are actually doing a lighter version by using heavy cream but anyway
we'll go ahead and stir that in and wait for it to come to a boil and then once
that happens we'll go ahead and dump in the rest of our corn and we'll continue
stirring at cooking until we're sure that's all heated through and then once
we're positive that's happen what we'll do is turn off the heat and stir in a
lot of cheese and I'm going with one part mozzarella to two parts Monterey
Jack although as usual please use whatever cheese as you want
I mean you are after all the Jason Bourne of this cheesy Bay corn but the
original recipe just uses mozzarella so I thought I would semi honor that with
the addition of some Monterey Jack which is kind of like mozzarella only has a
little more flavor but regardless of what you use we'll go ahead and stir
that in and then let me give you a little heads up here one thing I learned
about this recipe is that if you want the cheese all nice and stringy and
stretchy you have to brown the top and serve this
immediately because if you wait like an hour like I did you will not experience
the same effect is your about to see but anyway whether you wait
or do it right away we're gonna go ahead and finish the top of cheese before
browning it and here you can see me doing this very intricate pattern that I
thought would look super cool but as you're about to see once it was brown
you could not tell I did this so yes this was a complete waste of time but
you know what I regret nothing I mean come on we got to try things even if
they don't end up working ok the attempt is still heroic so I went ahead and
cheesed the top and then finished up with one last dusting of cayenne and
that's it once that said we'll go ahead and pop that in a very hot oven or
preferably under a broiler for about five to ten minutes or until everything
is heated through and the top is beautifully browned and hopefully
looking a little something like this which I think looks amazing and really
doesn't need a garnish but if we have some of those green onion tops around we
might as well slice those up and throw them on besides it's a proven scientific
fact that eating raw onions even a small amount helps prevent disease so keep
that in mind if you're one of these I don't like onions people I mean you
should still do it for your family and that's it our bake horn is done and
ready to enjoy probably as a side dish but I didn't actually have any other
food to serve next to this so I just went ahead and ate this all by itself
and it really was fantastic oh and like I said if you let this sit that cheese
loses all its trina's and it basically just sort of dissolves into the cream to
form one of the best cheesy sauces you've ever had and of course all that
bacon and jalapeno don't hurt in fact I'm going to switch to a spoon so I can
get more of that stuff and every single ingredient in this from the cheese to
the green onions to our peppers and bacon are just absolutely perfect
pairings with sweet corn I mean it really does not get much better than
this so basically this is my new all-time favorite creamed corn recipe oh
and by the way if it's still piping hot the texture is going to be fairly loose
but has this cools it will thicken up which will make this even more side-dish
like and this stuff would be perfect serve room temperature at a picnic or a
barbecue but anyway that's it a little something we call baked corn and by week
all I mean of course the bun shop in LA calls it that
which is where the original recipe that inspired this is from but anyway clever
names aside this is a beautiful delicious and easy to make corn side
dish that's equally amazing hot warm or room temp which is why I really do hope
you give it a try soon so head over to food whooshes calm for all the
ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy
you