BEHR Gemüsegarten: Products

Cooked sweetcorn

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

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, it is actually a grain, but is it used like a vegetable.

Sweetcorn has sweet and tender kernels that, as the name suggests, are very sugar-rich. Sweetcorn 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 in our farm in Gresse (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania). Sweetcorn loves nutritious and loose soil. Above all, an adequate supply of water is very important for the proper formation of the cobs.

There are sweetcorn varieties adapted to the different climate zones. For example, we have certain varieties for our cultivation in northern Germany that love the maritime climate and thrive very well there.

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 harvest our cooked sweetcorn using a machine. The corn plant is cut off and the cobs are separated from the stem. A special defoliation machine removes the green leaves from the cobs. The cobs are then trimmed at the top and bottom, shrink-wrapped in a special film, vacuum-packed and then boiled.

Preparation and freshness tips

Cooked sweetcorn has the advantage that it can be eaten straight away without much preparation. This saves a lot of time. If you want to enjoy it warm, simply fry it in a pan without its film packaging for a few minutes, barbecue it or place it in hot water. That’s it! Of course, you can also snack on the cold cobs as they are or scrape the kernels from the cobs with a sharp knife and serve them as a vegetable side dish or add them to a salad.

The cooked sweetcorn can be stored unopened until the best before date at room temperature. Once opened, it should be kept in the fridge and consumed as soon as possible.