I got a Weber grill. I've never owned a grill before. We'll see if I can assemble this myself. Literature I'll never read. That, okay well don't know what the [ __ ] this
is. It's the world's worst unboxing video. I'm strong and capable but this is hard. Dan, sorry my jam is boiling. Can I just leave and let Dan do it? And this also feels like if I don't assemble
it properly like I'll blow up. Best of luck to me. Hello, welcome to Home Movies, I'm Alison
Roman. Today we are going to be doing something that
you may or may not find interesting and that is grilling corn. I've been told by my associates that you all
are dying to know how to do it. Um if for whatever reason you are curious
how to grill corn, then we have got a video for you. Once we grill the corn, we're gonna make a
salad with it. The salad is delicious. It's gonna be salty, it's gonna be savory,
it's gonna be spicy, it's gonna be tangy, it's gonna be great. Do you like how I called you my associates? I think that's fine. I started the Sopranos again. Tony Soprano grills. I think that for the application of salad
there is no better way to grill corn than by husking it. Taking the silk off and just putting the corn
on the cob on the grill because it's gonna get the most color that way. I've said in the past otherwise. I want you to know that that I have written
recipes that suggest you should just grill the corn hole like this and then make a salad
from it. Totally cool to do that. I still think that's a great way to do it. To me, grilling your corn like in the husk
itself is best for when you're eating the corn on the cob. When you want like really tender kind of sweet
caramelized kernels. But for this particular salad and for most
salads, what I'm looking for is like char color and like still a lot of like corn texture. I don't want it to be too tender or too soft
because it's a salad and I want it to be, you know, have like stuff going on. Little croutons. Corn, nature's crouton. We're gonna also grill scallions which are
gonna be really nice because it's like if you're grilling one thing you may as well
grill another thing. Cilantro, pepperchini peppers, you could use
like a calabrian chili. You could use another sort of pickled pepper. Pickled jalapeno would be great. The idea being that you're including like
a tangy, salty, spicy, textured sort of pepper throughout. And then we're gonna finish them with corn
nuts, which is like a thing that I like to do for all corn salads. I think corn nuts in corn salad rules. I think it's really fun I think it's funny
I used to eat corn nuts every day as a kid. Every day. Yes why is that funny? There's something about little Alison Roman
there just eating corn nuts every day. Cool ranch corn nuts. I'm gonna probably include a little bit of
fresh cheese in it. Like something firm and squeaky like halloumi
or queso fresco providing some texture and saltiness to the whole thing. I never as a kid enjoyed soda. I never enjoyed candy. I didn't like cookies. I didn't like sweet things. I basically from the time I was born was just
like give me salt and give me spicy things. Yeah, Home Movies is just one long documentary
about my life. I love husking corn actually. How cute, it's like a little baby in a bun
in a bassinet. No, if I were grilling this over fire I would
probably leave the husk on the ends to like help me turn it but I'm doing this on a grill
and I'll have tongs so I'm going to peel this away. Come here. Yeah this is fun. Doing this outside is a good idea and that's
why a lot of people do it outside because this can just kind of you know go into your
compost or your garden or whatever. I'm like assuming everybody's like in a field
shucking corn. Well we had a good time, thank you for coming
to Home Movies, we'll see you next week. The nice thing about grilling corn is that
you don't have to oil it or season it now. It's not like other vegetables but because
we're gonna grill scallions with this that do need a little bit of oil. I'm just gonna lightly drizzle everything
and I mean like very light and you just kind of with your hands. Make sure everything is evenly coated. Which is honestly very fun. This, this is fun. I'm gonna season this with salt pepper or
actually just salt. Now we grill. How fun we're shooting outside. This grill is hot as. I turned it to high. I want this to happen quickly. I'm gonna put the corn on. Even as hot as it is, this will take a bit
for the corn to properly char and you don't have to be precious about it, I just kind
of like to keep them all in a row so I can just kind of move them back and forth occasionally. The scallions I'll just put on and I'm not
going to worry about turning them too much. These are very long scallions. All right I'm not going to close the grill
I'm just going to let the vegetables char in their own time. Depending on how hot your grill is, depending
on the size and shape of the vegetable, it could vary time to time but the nice thing
about grilling is that the objective is to burn it. It's to char the vegetables, so you have to
work pretty hard to really mess this up. And we're not looking for like perfect grill
marks, we're looking for like in sort of even caramelization and again that oil that we
added that is helping that happen. Like there's no way to make this without a
grill really. No you can, you can you can roast the corn
in a really hot oven like 450. It just takes a really long time. It's like an annoying thing to do. You could also boil corn. Boiled corn is delicious. That's honestly how I grew up eating it. So the scallions are ready. I'm just gonna flip them. The scallions we're looking to soften them
but we're not looking to cook them so much that they lose their like raw freshness typically
when you grill the whole scallion what happens is the greens tend to get a little bit more
charred and more cooked down and softer and the white bulb stays a little bit crunchier,
a little bit fresher, so that's what we're trying to maintain. We're trying to have it all. We're trying to have the best of every world. The nice thing about grilled scallions was
that the tops got really crispy almost like little chips. All right these are gonna get moved around. I'm gonna try and find the hottest spots. It's happening there we go all right I'm just
gonna let this girl get really hot again. Take a minute cool off. I'm gonna check those in like five to ten
minutes. This is the kind of thing where if you do
have to go inside and do something else take care of something, don't be worried that anything
is going to happen to the corn. Like it will continue to get dark and caramelized
and charred and grilled. It would take a very long time in here for
it to like burn beyond repair so don't be afraid of getting more color on your corn. It's been about five minutes. They're getting like charred in spots and
that's what we want so I'm just gonna keep moving them around for like another maybe
five minutes and try to get them more even and that's that. Oh okay we're back the corn is ready now take
it off the grill. If there's like some side that isn't totally
charred that's fine because this side is an on balance. This corn is beautifully cooked and grilled
so we're gonna take this inside and make our salad. Our corn is grilled our scallions are also
cooked. One thing I will say is you do want to wait
until this is cool enough to handle to take off the corn on the cob and there's a lot
of different ways to do this you can just do it straight on a cutting board but a nice
way to do it is to do it into a bowl. Basically sawing it off like that. I find it tough to get like really in there
though. Some people do this thing where they like
they'll put like a tiny bowl or a container. I still find it a little unwieldy to be honest. Like it's like slippery. I wouldn't go out of my way to make cornstalk
but if you have a bunch of cobs you may as well. Um if you don't want to do it that way you
can also just do it on a cutting board sometimes I actually just prefer that because it feels
more stable to do it on wood than like a slippery enamel surface, but kind of trying to illustrate
that there are a lot of ways to do it. And if you go slow and steady you should avoid
the problem that seems to plague many of us, which is the corn going absolutely everywhere. And if you're not sure how far to go down,
just move really slowly. And you can see each kernel that falls away
should look whole. See that's like a whole kernel. I just did this because I know that somebody
was going to be like you know you can put a bowl inside of it, and I'm gonna be like,
I know, I don't prefer that. I'm sure there's also other ways if we googled
it right now I'm sure there's like several websites that are like "A grilling corn hack
that you never knew that you never didn't need." That's the thing about cooking is like when
people are like, oh you should do it that way, or you have to do it that way, or you
know that if you do it that way, it's like yeah there are about a million ways to do
pretty much everything in the kitchen and I think it's all about not listening to what
other people tell you should or has to be and figuring out the way that feels comfortable
for you this is just how I like to do it. Well there we go. I tried to get every last kernel to make David
happy and then I ended up spilling corn over the floor so don't ever do anything for a
man. Even if he is your colleague. Associate. Oh, what's going on here today? I'm going to fill this with water and just
simmer it, that's going to be our corn stock. It's kind of like the parmesan broth of summer
where you're like do I have to do it? No, but if you have it you can although I
did previously say parmesan broth is a lie, I kind of still stand by that. That also said, if you had any parmesan rinds,
feel free to stick them in this corn broth. It'd be delicious. Mmm this corn tastes really good. It's, it like the char charring it in that
way um really enhances not only its sweetness but it transforms the sweetness into like
a more complex sort of evolved adult flavor. It's kind of like when you take sugar and
you caramelize it, it becomes more bitter, but also just more interesting. It has a lot more going on, so the same thing
happens when you char the corn. If you look at it before some of the spots
were really dark, they were really charred I don't mind that. I really enjoy that because when you look
at the corn now again on balance. It's all sort of perfectly cooked and you
have some spots that are really really charred in some spots that are less charred not only
visually is this really nice but when you eat a spoonful of it just on its own, mmm,
it tastes so much better than just like one note sweet corn. Which should absolutely be celebrated when
you have like peak season amazing corn that should really just be like boiled and rubbed
with butter and salt, but you know it's a little early for this corn and by grilling
it you're sort of like making the most out of it. So you don't have to have like spectacular
corn to make a really good corn salad or really good grilled corn really but see what I mean? When basically now like this is like a bowl
of grains except it's corn. Is corn and grain? How do I not know that. We're going to take off these little stems
from the scallion. You could do this before but do it before
do it after. I don't care and now we are going to just
coarsely chop these. They don't have to be super fine. In fact I think that the corn should be the
smallest thing in this salad visually. And from them we're just going to season it
with everything. Our lime juice, our cilantro, our pepperoncini,
and then of course our corn nuts. If you can't find corn nuts, you can also
use something like an almond or a walnut or a pumpkin seed or a sunflower seed, anything
crunchy in the salad is gonna do really well because corn, you know it has some texture
but it's like generally pretty soft. It's like half a bunch we'll use the rest
of this just to garnish the top. Garnishing the top is not a superfluous exercise
by the way. it's like still very much an important part
of the dish if you're using pepperoncinis, you can also season the whole salad with a
bit of the juice from the pepperoncinis but we're going to want like basically like a
quarter cup of liquid. Lime juice, vinegar, pepperoni juice, pickled
jalapeno liquid. This is going to go over the corn. Mmm I'm gonna do some more lime. I'm sure you've noticed enjoy my food like
severely tangy and acidic. If that's not your speed and you prefer like
gentle sweetness in your corn with less acidity then that's fine too. I'm gonna start with four pepperoncinis. I think these pepperoncinis are really nice. I love their color and I love their texture. Because there's no other fat in here I am
going to give it another drizzle of some olive oil. Call that two tablespoons and this is one
of those salads that would really do well to sit. And these corn nuts are just going to get
roughly chopped. This is not like a must-do but it is fun also
because when people eat the salad they're gonna be like what is that crunchy part. So good you're gonna love this salad it looks
so herby but also hearty. Like it just feels like it's a substantial
salad. So we do have queso fresco here. My beef with fetta is that once you put it
in a salad it kind of just bleeds onto everything and then you have like this weird milky white
liquid, but this cheese will always just kind of stay like squeaky little uh springy curds
almost. You could very easily cut it into little cubes,
although I take issue with perfect shapes and symmetry which is why I like to crumble. I think it's perfect without cheese. But you know what, it's really good with cheese,
but leave it out if you want it's is what I'm saying so my vote for this would be like
a queso fresco, a queso blanco, or a halloumi. Try to keep the pieces largish. Again, if they get too small they kind of
just like disappear and you lose what's making this cheese special, which is texture this
made a lot of salad. Who's coming over? Literally nobody. It's so good, it's like tangy, and spicy,
and nutty, and crunchy. If I were serving this at a barbecue, I would
just keep it in the bowl that I made it in. I actually don't own that many serving bowls,
so when I have people over and I make things like this salad I literally just tend to serve
it in that bowl. Which is why I really like having decorative
mixing bowls because they double as a bowl that I can serve. I've made a lot of corn salads in my day but
I think this might be my favorite one and the constants tend to be you know like a corn
salad that has corn nuts in it right but this one has herbs and scallions. Sort of no matter what you do, if you take
your corn to that level of char, then it's kind of hard to like not make something totally
delicious. If you wanted to make like a full meal out
of something like this, like honestly serve like seared shrimp or scallops over this or
like a chicken breast or a grilled piece of steak or anything. It is really hearty. it's like super satisfying
and I don't know, not grain free. I'm just gonna let you know, I'm gonna simmer
this corn stock for like maybe 45 minutes to an hour and then I'm gonna drain it and
I'm gonna freeze it. I'm gonna label it corn stock and the next
time I need like a vegetable broth or I'm making something like a summery vegetable
soup which I honestly never do uh I would use that corn broth. Let me know in the comments below if you have
any suggestions for corn broth. That's a genuine and earnest comment I just
made David.
