Corn on the Cob

Method

1. prep4 min
   strip husks and rub the silk off under cold running water — silk left in the rows scorches nothing but it does trap water and slide off onto the plate. Break or trim any ear too long for the pot; a rim-propped ear cooks unevenly at the exposed end
2. boil6 min
   full rolling boil, uncovered
   water in the widest pot you have, at least three times the volume of the corn. Skip salting the water: the kernel is sealed in a waxy pericarp that salt barely crosses in six minutes, so the seasoning does essentially nothing here and belongs on the butter instead. A spoon of sugar is the one useful addition, and only for supermarket corn whose sugars have already begun converting to starch since picking
3. cook5 min
   boiling water, heat off, lid on
   corn slid into the boiling water, then kill the heat and cover. Fresh sweet corn is already tender — you are only heating it to about 65 °C, hot enough to gelatinize a little starch and burst the kernels sweetly under the tooth. Held at a hard boil past eight minutes the cell walls collapse and the pericarp toughens against the mush inside, which is the difference between corn that pops and corn that squeaks
4. season2 min
   drained, still steaming
   lift the ears out and let them drain a full 30 seconds — surface water dilutes butter into a slick that runs off. Then butter + flaky salt + cracked pepper while the kernels are hot enough to melt the fat into the rows, so the salt is carried onto the corn rather than left on the plate
5. top1 min
   at the table
   or, for the elote treatment, mayonnaise brushed on in place of butter + cotija pressed into it + chili powder + a hard squeeze of lime; the mayonnaise is doing the same job as the butter but its emulsifiers keep it clinging to a damp ear