How to eat corn on the cob so you don't give the impression you're a tiny bit psychotic. 'Cause yes, you could actually be eating your corn in a way that gives people the wrong (or maybe right) impression of you. Like you didn't have enough to worry about in life.
You're at a family BBQ or street festival and you innocently pick up a piece of corn on the cob to eat. Raising it towards your mouth, butter dripping from your wrist to your elbow, you take your first satisfying bite.
So far so good. You're on track. But be careful because curious eyes are on you the moment you start your second bite. Everyone is watching to see what you do next.
You of course don't notice because you're busy concentrating on the sweet bursts of flavour, the satisfying crunch, the pillowcase sized piece of corn wedged firmly between two molars.
Will your next bite take you ...
Straight across the cob in a line?
Or around it in circles?
For this you will be judged. It's a well-known fact that how you eat your corn is the best way to tell if you're demented.
Table of Contents
Eating corn across the long way
If you eat your cob straight across like a typewriter chances are you're pretty stable. You fold your clothes when you put them away, own a Golden Retriever and can generally be counted on to pick your spouse up from the airport on time without challenging anyone in the parking lot to a cage match.
You're eating corn the right way. The way almost everyone eats corn.
Anyone around who's watching you can relax and enjoy their day.
Eating corn in a circular pattern
If, on your next bite, you choose to start going in circles, you've got trouble.
If you eat your corn around the cob in circles it's a clear indication you could go rogue at any minute. You're a hippie, a wild child, maybe even an artist. You're basically immoral and everyone watching you knows it. YOU have parking tickets. Unpaid parking tickets. And you probably drank kombucha when everyone still thought it was a poisonous alien life form.
But you're not a complete lunatic.
Eating corn like a lunatic
Those are even easier to spot. Those are the peckers. The people who randomly lift the cob of corn to the general direction of their face and wherever their mouth meets the cob, they bite.
If you eat your corn in a non-sensical pattern, you're giving a warning sign to everyone around you. One bite here, one bite there, another bite over on the other side until your corn on the cob looks like it has meth mouth.
Once anyone at the BBQ sees you eating your corn like this, you might as well get your fill of everything within arm's reach. Pack smoked ribs into your purse, dump a potato salad into your pants ... whatever you need to do, because you're not going to be invited to another grilling get together ever.
I eat my corn straight across like a typewriter. I know you were wondering. And I'm wondering about you.
HOW do you eat your corn? This is an informal poll and the information will not be held against you in a court of law. Just the court of public opinion.
Probably. But honestly, who knows these days.
Tim
You didn't address the people who slice it off the cob?
Karen
I know. I decided that discussing them and their idiosyncrasies in public would be too much for them. ~ karen!
Emily
Typewriter for me. However, this past Monday we had some guys straight from Korea over for dinner and did a cookout in grand Labor Day style, including corn on the cob. The grilled India recipe Karen shared, if you must know. I thought for a while maybe the Koreans didn't know what to do with the corn, so I set the example and picked it up with my hands. Instead of following my lead, they held the cob down horizontally on the plate with their forks and used their steak knives held parallel to the table to cut the kernels off. They may have then used chopsticks to eat the corn, by then I was eating grilled pineapple and had better things to do than watch.
Barbara Kemp
Typewriter! I grew up on a farm and we never wasted anything!
Donna
I eat it straight across. (as I recall. I haven't eaten corn on the cob in years.)
That third way is downright disturbing.
Fannie Mae
I eat round and round on the ends. Then typewriter it out.
Then peck to gather any kernels that I may have missed.
I'm a rebel. A Bohemian rebel.
SuzNKton
I don't eat corn. Ever.
Deb
After the initial first rows across to open up the cob, one row at a time. I love when each kernel just pops off. Delicious.
Eva
This! I do what I have to, to get started and then pull them off one kernel at a time! I usually start of going around at the ends until I can get a row to come off cleanly. Lol I don’t know where that puts me
Brita
Like my grandfather: Put a big blop of butter on the butt end of the corn, start there and eat all the way across like a typewriter. Put another big blop of butter on and so on and so forth. The typewriter method is how America learned to do it thanks to Saturday morning Looney Tunes cartoons.
Bonnie Harris
Typewriter, but I sometimes cut off the first row so less corn flies up my nose. Last night I tried the round-and-round method though, I don't know what got into me! (Word to the wise, don't Google image "meth mouth". You'll be so glad you didn't.)
Lez
Haha! How to make everyone immediately Google Meth mouth! I genuinley don't know what one looks like! Karen's picture of 'that' cob!?
Lynne from Design The Life You Want To Live
Oh no. I'm in trouble. 😂
Karen
Freakshow. ~ karen!
Becky
I never knew anyone, other than toddlers who don't follow rules anyway, that eats their corn any way other than typewriter style .
This is a thing??
Kathryn
I have a cute pink corn-remover (looks like a hole saw drill bit in a bowl). It takes the corn off very efficiently so I can put it on my plate and eat like a grownup.
I was just imagining how hard it was for you to eat the wrong ways to take the pictures.
Jack Ledger
And why were the corn cobs afraid of Jimmy? Because Jimmy cracks corn and he don't care!
Karen
Hahahaha! I was waiting for corny jokes in this comment section! ~ karen
Stephanie Hastin
Because Jimmy smokes crack out of a corn cob
Gail
We must be all of "a certain age" since no one asked what a typewriter is!
Mary Kathleen Rocha
Typewriters the real question is: left to right or right to left?
Which way do you swing?
Becky
I'm left handed so the base of the cob is in my left hand and it's always left to right
Patty H
Im also left handed and i hold the corn on both ends and eat right to left.
Mary Kathleen Rocha
I am left handed, and I hold the base in my left hand and eat from right to left.
So that leaves me swinging with the Kombucha crowd and maybe a little late to the airport!
Jenny W
I am apparently insane, Lol!
A little bit OCD
A little bit Hippy
And (new to me) a whole lot of Meth Mouth!
But as long as there is loads of butter and a generous shake of salt,
I am considered harmless ;)
Sabina
I am a combination of typewriter and circling, in true Gemini fashion ♊️☯️
Eileen
Ditto!!
: )
But then somewhat obsessively I'll go back to "clean up" spots I might have missed. I'm a terrible housekeeper, but my cobs will be neat and clean.
maura
Round and round of course!
Marguerite Floyd
Typewriter style. I don't have any parking tickets, but I did drink kombucha long before it was trendy.
Raena
Typewriter then round to grab anything I missed.
Thera
Me too!