Ba'corn (Cheesy Bacon Corn Gratin) - Food Wishes

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

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 542,079

Rating: 4.9537363 out of 5

Keywords: Bacon, Corn, cheese, bacorn, casserole, bake, skillet, chef, john, food, wishes, side, dish, vegetable, grain, cooking, recipe

Id: bSdLdq9AOb0

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/nc_positronics]

For the less adventurous eaters I'll be fixing this for: is there an acceptable substitution for the jalapenos? Would a green or red bell pepper provide a complementary taste, or would you just leave it out entirely for people who can't handle the heat?

I want to fix this tomorrow but don't have the time to experiment before then...

[u/Corsaer]

This looks really simple and delicious. I've made a similar corn dish as a dip, in a slow cooker. It was tasty but this looks better to be honest.