The Lure of Spicy Corn

My assignment for the Big Griffith Thanksgiving Party is jalapeno corn. There’s an irony there. I’m from Idaho, a place where the spiciest foods I grew up eating were salty mashed potatoes. 

So, as a newlywed I showed up in the Arizona southwest, home of the green chile and the jalapeno. Me, from the Land of Bland.  

I was asked to bring whatever I liked to dinner. While I lived in D.C., my coworker’s Texan wife brought jalapeno corn to a work potluck. It had so much butter and cream cheese, I was smitten.  So I brought that to Thanksgiving. Suddenly, everyone in my six-generation-Arizonan in-laws’ family was smitten, too.

The next year, I had to tweak the recipe–so that it made ten pounds of corn instead of one.  Since then, I’ve learned that if I leave the seeds and membrane in, the jalapenos make the dish much hotter. You can seed them, and take out the membrane, and it’s really mild.

Some like it hot. 

But at any heat, it still has butter, cream cheese, fresh garlic, and…I’m telling you, it’s amazing. If you want to make your Thanksgiving family and friends smitten as well (I was going to say, if you want to smite them…) you can make it, too! I’ll post the recipe below.

JALAPENO CORN

6 1-lb bags frozen white corn

1 Cup butter

2 8-oz cubes cream cheese

4 (or more) not seeded jalapeno peppers, chopped

garlic salt

salt and pepper

season salt

Thaw and heat corn, drain. Set aside. On stove-top combine butter, cream cheese, peppers, and seasonings. Stir until creamy. Pour over corn. Stir well. Heat through. Then cook 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Serve.

(Note: Okay to keep warm in crock pot. Also okay to bake.)