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Detroit-Style Pizza Corn | Recipeish | Gustus Vitae

by Frankie Scanlon

The best part of a Detroit style pizza isn't the sauce and it isn't the crumb. It's the crown: the ring of cheese that runs all the way to the edge of the pan, hits hot steel, and turns crisp and brown and salty. That's the piece people fight over. Sweet corn does the same trick for free. It's already sugary, it already browns, and all it needs is fat to carry the flavor and Everything But The Detroit Style Pizza to do the rest. Butter, season, roast.

Calling it a 'recipe' is generous, but damn if it's not delicious.

  • Yield: 4 ears.
  • Time: 30 minutes, 25 of them hands off.
  • Storage Notes: Leftovers are theoretical. If you somehow manage it, cut the kernels off the cob and they'll keep 3 days.
  • Difficulty: Very Easy.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

  1. Heat the oven to 425F and line a sheet pan with foil. Husk the corn and get every last silk off; the strands you leave behind will burn, and they'll taste like it.
  2. Butter, not oil. Smear the softened butter over every side of every ear, right on the pan. Butter is the glue, and it's also the point: the blend is built on butter and cheese solids, so you're layering fat on fat instead of thinning it out with oil.
  3. Season past the point of comfort. Shake the seasoning over the ears, roll them through whatever lands on the foil, and shake again. Corn is round and most of what you sprinkle is going to slide off; that's why 3 Tbs for four ears sounds like a lot and isn't. You want them visibly coated, not lightly dusted.
  4. Roast 25 minutes, uncovered, turning once at the halfway mark. This is the whole idea: the seasoning carries cane sugar, butter, and two dried cheeses, and corn's own sugars are sitting right there under the surface. Dry, direct heat browns all of it together into the crackly, salty crust you're actually after. Tent the pan with foil and you steam it instead; then you've just got seasoned corn, and that's not the same thing.
  5. Dust with more seasoning while it's hot, and eat it standing over the pan.

NOTES & VARIATIONS

Grill it. Same butter, same seasoning, straight over medium direct heat for 12 to 15 minutes, turning every few minutes until it's charred in spots. Arguably better than the oven; the smoke does a decent impression of a pizza oven, and the sugars char instead of just browning.

Build the crown. In the last 5 minutes, hit each ear with finely grated low moisture mozzarella or parmesan and let it go until the cheese sets and blisters. Now you've got the actual frico edge, on a cob.

Off the cob. Cut the kernels off, scrape them back through the buttery drippings on the foil, and add another shake of Everything But The Detroit Style Pizza. That bowl goes on tacos, into eggs, over a salad, or straight into your face with a spoon.

Out of season. Frozen kernels, dried well, spread on a hot sheet pan with the butter and seasoning, roasted until the edges catch. Not the same, but still pretty good, and available in February.

The applications from here are endless: alongside ribs, next to a burger, chopped into a summer salad, or as the only thing on the plate at nine at night. But run it plain the first time, straight off the pan, and see how far butter and one tin actually get you.

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