BEHR Gemüsegarten: Products

Sweetcorn

Corn is a very old cereal plant that was cultivated in Mexico about 5,000 years ago and was at that time one of the staple foods of the Mayans and Aztecs.

In America, corn is now grown on a large scale. Around 20% of the agricultural land in the US is used to grown corn. The type of corn suitable for consumption is always sweetcorn, which is available in different sizes, shapes and colours. The corn used in the animal feed industry, or ground for flour, is called grain corn or maize. It has significantly larger cobs than sweetcorn. In Germany, sweetcorn has only been cultivated since the end of the Second World War.

Sweetcorn is sometimes referred to as sugar corn. Strictly speaking, sweetcorn is actually a grain, but it is used like a vegetable.

Sweetcorn has sweet and tender kernels that, as the name suggests, are very sugar-rich. It does not contain gluten, which gives it a great advantage over conventional cereals such as rye and wheat, as gluten-free products are increasingly in demand these days.

Cultivation and harvesting

We grow our sweetcorn at our farm in Gresse (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania) and offer it as fresh "corn on the cob" from July to October. But we also get it cooked and vacuum-packed.

Sweetcorn loves nutritious and loose soil. Above all, an adequate supply of water is very important for the proper formation of the cobs.

There is often only a small window of availability for the harvest of sweetcorn, as the kernels fall very quickly from the mature cobs. We mainly harvest our sweetcorn by hand, as you have to be very careful not to damage the cobs. An automated machine is only able to do this to a limited extent.

Preparation and freshness tips

In general, sweetcorn is always cooked before consumption. You can either place the whole cobs in boiling salted water or scrape the grains off with a sharp knife before cooking and then boil them without the cobs.

Sweetcorn should not be stored for too long after purchase, as the sugar quickly turns into starch and thus the pleasantly sweet taste is lost. However, it can be stored in the fridge for 1–2 days without hesitation.