(relaxing upbeat music) - Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy, how are you? It's great to see you and welcome back. Today, I'm going to be making a recipe that I first learned
about way back in February and it's for corn ribs. Have you seen corn ribs? You probably have. Now that we're into summer
and corn is actually here... I wanted make it way back in February, but corn is not in season. And the only corn I could find
was frozen corn on the cob. And that wouldn't be a very
fair assessment or test, I feel like, because corn on the cob is one of my favorite things in the world. It's so simple, it's so easy and it really highlights
the beauty of summer corn. So I'm gonna be making
corn ribs today using local and in-season corn. The preparation is actually very simple. We're going to be taking the
corn and we're going to be cutting it in an interesting way. We're gonna be cutting it length
wise and length wise again so we have it quartered length wise, and then we're gonna season
it, air fry it or bake it. I'm gonna be air frying it. And then it will curl to look
a bit like a rib, a spare rib, but made out of corn. Today's recipe inspiration
comes from a TikTok video @spicednice. I'll put a link down
below to the original. And the general inspiration comes from, in terms of flavoring, comes from elotes, which is a Mexican street
food style of corn. It is absolutely delicious
seasoned with butter, mayonnaise, chili, lime. Fantastic, an excellent way to have corn. So let's go ahead and get started. First thing, we're gonna
need is some fresh corn. (Emmy hums) Got loads of it. Ears of corn wheat. Wait, some of these are
upside down. (chuckles) Like this, (vocalizes). (Emmy chuckles) So I've got four ears of corn. This of course is not all
going to fit in my air fryer. I think I'll begin with two. First thing we do is gonna shuck the corn. Take the hulls off. I love that squeak. Take the silk, oh, look at this. This is called butter and sugar corn. And it is called pat because
it's yellow and white and oh, so very sweet. Yeah. Look how beautiful that ear of corn is! Wah! Why did they call it ear of corn? Etymologists, let me know. Alrighty, so there is that. There's one. We've got silk everywhere. Did you know that their
silk goes, travels down to each corn? Each little niblet here is
connected to a strand of silk. So weird. Corn's odd. Corn's oddly good, oddly good. I grew corn for the first time this year. I grew a glass gem variety and it managed to survive
the hurricane Henri that came through. Actually, about the time it reached us, it became a tropical storm, I believe. Henri, thank you for your visit and thank you for being
kind and gentle to us. I was worried. My corn, I've been growing it all summer and then we're coming to the
last bit and like, oh no, a hurricane is approaching. My 12 feet stock of corn. (whimpers) But they managed to stay erect! I like that, like that. All right. So, two beautiful ears of corn. Now we need to cut this
lengthwise into quarters. Now, most videos I've seen
people stand the corn upright like this and cut it down this way. To do that, it seems pretty unstable because the corn doesn't want to stand up. So the first thing I'm going
to do is trim off the end. Little sacrificial end. So now the corn stands up. That's nice. We like our corn standing upright. I'm gonna take the knife and
this is what Spicenice does: they cut it this way. And that's what they recommend. Yeah. It's actually not hard to cut at all. Sharp knife, just go vertically
and be patient, right? Rock, and there it is. Look at that. I've never cut corn like
that before in my life. So two halves and then cut the other one. And also, they cut it this way, which seems terribly dangerous. So I'm gonna cut it this way. (Emmy grunts) It is hard to cut this way. But that other way seems
so, like a great way to cut yourself. (Emmy grunts) (metal clanks) It is hard to cut it this way. So I'm gonna try doing that and then go from the other side. Okay. So one, half, one half. Now we have a quarter. We have a little corn boat, but look, we can see the interior of the corn here. Look at how it's attached to the cob. How cool. And I'm having a slight
flashbacks to when I attempted the hotdog as a bone of the
corn, the Jenna marbles video. And I think there was a fact
that there are 22 rows of corn all around a corn? 22, 21? Anyways, that was a bit
of a nightmarish video. I'll put a link down below
in case you're curious. Because I know there are a
lot of masochists out there. All right, we're gonna, since
this one's a little wider, I'm gonna try it this way. Don't put your, do not hold the corn. 'Cause then you'll cut yourself, okay? Just keep your fingers out of the way. All right. We have four. Set these aside. Repeat. I'm gonna do a little
sacrificial, butt cut. Stand it up. Let's try a cleaver this time. (corn thudding) Not equally better or worse. Worse, because it's not straight. So when you have your initial cut, make sure you try to get
it as half as possible. All right. So these ones are going to
be a little bit different. That one's a little bit different, innit? That's all right. Still corn and still delicious. So I want long ribs. I've noticed in photos the
longer the piece of corn, the more it curves and
looks more like a rib. So I'm gonna keep mine longer. If you want your shorter, by
all means, cut 'em in half. Okay. So cleaver actually does
pretty good work of things. Alrighty. Now, I'm gonna feed those to my chickens. How is it? Good corn? Sorry, didn't mean to bother you. Yeah, good corn. Okay. Now we're ready to season the corn. I've got myself a large bowl here and we're gonna drizzle some oil. Like, you know, that much. Black pepper. (pepper grinding) I like a lot of black pepper. Garlic powder. Oh, you know, as little or
as much garlic as you like. It's probably about a quarter
teaspoon, half teaspoon, depending on your taste. And onion powder. Oh, mine's clumpy. Hang on. About the same amount. And chili powder, as much as you like. And depending on how hot your
chili powder is, more or less. Probably adding about an
eighth of a teaspoon here. And I'm gonna add half a lime. Actually, that's a quarter
of a lime. (chuckles) Put that in there. Give that a little bit of a swizzle. (metal scraping) Oh, cannot forget some salt. About a half a teaspoon. For this amount of corn,
I'd say a quarter teaspoon because I'm only gonna be doing probably an ear and a half. So, adjust these seasonings
to the amount of corn that you are making. We just want enough to
coat all the pieces. Okay. So there's that. And here are my corn
bones and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna toss my corn in there. So I'm doing, I'm gonna toss six in here. Swirl them around, give them a little toss. Make sure each one is coated. Can really get everything
in the nooks and crannies by using a pastry brush and rub everybody with the seasoning. Smells great already. That lime. Impregnated. Look, it's in all the cracks. It's like the mortar. Oh, just splattered it all over my chest. Awesome. At least I'm not wearing
a white shirt for once. Although I don't own
very many white shirts. Alrighty, so we'll let that sit while I preheat my air
fryer to 400 degrees. So, let me do that. So air fryer, air fry. I'm gonna do eight minutes
about at 400 degrees. I'm gonna start. This air fryer's very loud. (air whooshing) But, it is what it is. So, eight to 10 minutes, depending on how done you like your corn. I like my corn a little less done. I don't like overcooked corn. So eight minutes. Preheat first. And then when it says add food, I'm gonna add the food, you know? All right. Now we are going to add the corn. Into the basket. So much quieter now. One, two. Seeing this? (corn sizzling) Hear that sizzling? Boop boop boop boop, boop
boop boop, boop boop boop. Yeah. Okay. See you in eight minutes! Alrighty, lovelies, the
air fryer just beeped. The corn ribs should be done. Halfway through the cooking,
I did give these a flip. So, let's see how they look. (Emmy grunts) All right. Look at this! Now this one curled
beautifully, look at that! Looks like a riba rib rib. These are cooked. Look, they're already
starting to get shriveled on the outside there. So that is very well cooked for me. I, as I said earlier, I
don't like my ribs to be, don't like my corn to be overcooked. So I'm gonna cook this
piece a little longer. Half of my ribs are a little
bit wider than my others. So I took out the skinnier
ones that have curled nicely and are definitely cooked. And I'm gonna give those
a couple more minutes. So while that's going, let's talk a little bit about cheese. I'm going to be using Cotija. It crumbles beautifully. Let me show you how it just
crumbles in your finger. It just crumbles in
your fingers like that. So you just pinch it and it
just crumbles beautifully. Look at that. It's got a funky smell
to it, like cheese does. And it is very, very salty. Very, very briny and salty. And while it smells kind
of funky and Parmesan-y, the flavor isn't as strong
as you might expect. I've read that you can use
Parmesan as a substitution, but Cotija is lightly a different texture. It's a little bit more wet, yet crumbly a little bit of a bounce to it. But I would say they're
similar in the sense of the kind of salty intensity, but delicious. Okay, so. 38 seconds. Okay.
(air fryer beeps) Alrighty. Now we've got some more
curl and that's what we want because we want these to
look like ribs, after all. So, nice. Curled. Corny. And there's a little bit of
kind of charring on the edges. Nice. Okay. Artfully arrange those on your plate. So while these are hot, we're gonna rub these with some butter. Now I didn't want to put
butter in the air fryer because it would have
burned and burnt butter, brown butter's good, but
burnt butter is not good. So we're gonna rub that with butter. Great. Next we're gonna use some
mayonnaise, or mayonesa. I'm just gonna squirt it for
ease onto each little rib. Yum, yum, yum. Oh yeah. And then we're going to take our cheese. Then we can slather, the mayonnaise, of course,
is gonna add a ton of flavor, but it's also going to act
as the glue for our cheese. Now we're taking our Cotija
and sprinkle that all over. Now we're gonna finish with
a shake of chili powder. Oh. So beautiful. A little bit of heat and
a little bit of cilantro if you like. It adds not only color,
but a ton of flavor and put my lime wedges on the side because that's what I'm gonna squeeze on when I bite into that. Oh, look at that, so beautiful. Alrighty, my lovelies, the
corn ribs are complete! Now let's finally give them a taste and see if they taste
as good as they smell. Look at this. I love how it bends like that. Yum yum yum yum. Okay, before I bite into it, I'm going to squeeze
some lime juice on there and then a little extra
shake of chili powder. Yeah. Alrighty, here we go. Itadakimasu! (corn crunches) Really good. Mm. The corn is packed with flavor. This is cooked more than I
usually cook my corn on the cob. I place mine into rolling boiling water for about four minutes. I love how it pops in your mouth. This is a little dryer. This reminds me more of like
barbecue or roasted corn, but it's still delicious. It's sweet. The kernels are small and succulent and this is just packed with flavor. You can taste the briny, salty cheese, a little bit of mayo in there. The chili powder adds a
little tiny bit of heat. And then you've got the
acidity from the lime. That goes so well with
the butter and the mayo. For those of you that are
concerned about the mayo, don't be just put it on there and try it. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's perfect. Mhmm. I do have to say I'm not used to taking such little dainty bites when
it comes to corn on the cob. I always feel like I really
have to bite into it. But with this, you can just
take dainty little bites and get every little bit of corn off. It's really great. Well, I didn't get all of it. It's a very efficient
way to eat your corn. Nice and clean. My father would definitely approve. This is flavor packed. I would make one adjustment, if you're using cotija cheese, I would skip the salt and the
initial kind of seasoning. The cotija cheese is plenty salty enough, but altogether it is
so stinking, delicious. (corn crunches) Mhmm. And really easy to make. Mhmm. Mm. So what's the point of
the whole corn rib thing? Well, I think it's a novel
way to present the corn. It's a kind of fun way to eat it. It doesn't take much time
to cook or to prepare, but in terms of what really
makes this recipe work for me, it's all of the elote
seasoning on the corn. It's such a beautiful
combination of flavors. I think that's really what
is the star in this recipe. It's all about seasoning. So if you don't want to go to the lengths of cutting your corn like this, if you don't have an air fryer or if you just don't want
to even do corn ribs, at least try the elote
preparation for corn because it is just so good. One of my absolute favorite
ways of eating corn. So delicious. But corn ribs are very fun
to eat and a very interesting vegetarian analog to the
experience of biting meat or in this case, corn off a bone. (Emmy giggles) Perfect actually for a barbecue picnic, It'd be great to prep all these and then just barbecue these on the grill. Fast and easy way to cook it, too. Cook, you know in a quarter of the time of actual corn on the cob. Mhmm. One more note, please make this recipe when corn is in season. It will taste infinitely
better than corn in February. At least in the Northern hemisphere. Alrighty, my lovelies. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed that one. I hope you learn something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media, subscribe, and I shall see you within the next one! Toodaloo, take care. Bye! (light music) (chuckling) Can you see
all the corn in my teeth? I have a lot of corn in my teeth, but that's what happens when
you eat corn on the cob. All right, bye!
