I know many chefs are on to the benefit of boiling corn cobs for stock, but they really are incredible. They can be used for maximizing corn flavor in foods as opposed to the traditional uses as substitutes for toilet paper and building material for tobacco pipes (aye, popeye). Recently, I pressure-cooked some cobs at home to make a foundation broth for a corn cilantro soup and fell in love with the idea again.
Even more recently, we chose to maximize flavors for a chilled 'butter sugar corn' soup at the guest chef dinner at the BVI Chefs Invitational series. Butter sugar corn (a bi-colored variety) is one of the great vegetables indigenous to New England. When I lived in Rhode Island (over 10 years ago), I took advantage of my free opportunities to drive the offroads a bit west and hunt for local farmers who would sell the amazingly sweet ears by the roadside of their farms. The natural flavor is so sweet and creamy (... hence, the name). Beside Rhode Island reds, quahogs, and coffee milk, they are what I miss the most.
Although we had no pressure cooker available in the BVI kitchen, we boiled them for a longer period of time to get the same broth base. The base stock was then simmered with some of the shaved kernels, puréed, and strained a couple of times with a touch of cream to make it silky smooth. Once chilled, it was an intense shot of natural corn flavor. We garnished it with only lightly grilled kernels and fresh chervil.
Corn has been on the chopping block for some time now, and it truly deserves respect when treated as a flavor component... not as a starch thickener, syrupy sweetener, gasoline-enhancer, snack chip, or other strange mutation. It also contains a significant amount of natural glutamate.
Liberate your zea mays!
