If you came looking for corn smut you've found it. And so did I a few days ago up in my corn patch. What it is and why I ever thought it was a good idea to eat it.
Amsterdam's red light district. The Playboy mansion. The super-deep-down-secret-you're-pretty-sure-you-erased-it hard drive of almost any computer in the world. All places it would be perfect acceptable, expected even, to find various forms of smut.
You do not, on the other hand, expect to encounter smut while in your vegetable garden. I'm just an old woman out picking berries and BAM I'm confronted with smut. Because of my obvious innocence and purity I'm proud to say I didn't even know what it was when I saw it.
But there it was. Something grotesque quite literally bursting out of the top of one of my corn cobs.
Almost instantly I remembered a post I'd seen on Instagram from a local chef. He was all googley eyed over a cob of corn that looked like a gargoyle had barfed it up. People in the comments were chiming in about how jealous they were, how it was Mexican *gold* and he should cook it up immediately.
It was corn smut. Seriously. That's the name of it.
I wasn't quite as excited to see it on my corn but also figured, I like to be in the know, so I pulled off the cob and took it home. Even though it was hideously ugly. Like, seriously disturbing.
Once I got it back home, I stripped the husk off to see exactly what the hell kind of demon had taken over my corn cob..
Even though the "smut" was only on the top of the cob I was no less revolted.
I immediately ran inside and headed to Google looking for some kind of answers. According to the Internet Corn Smut is a fungal infection of the corn that happens randomly and naturally. It's similar to a mushroom suddenly growing. Lovers of smut praise it's indescribable taste, the earthy quality it has and how well it pairs with cheese.
Obviously these people were stretching here ... I mean what doesn't pair well with cheese? A pair of dirty Birkenstocks would pair well with cheese.
Instructions for cooking smut are kind of vague but it seemed like you could just sauté it and add it as a topping to almost anything. Based on some Instagram recommendations and since I had some quesadillas in the freezer, I pulled those out and got ready to make a smutty dinner.
Would you eat this?
Would you like to save this stuff?
The kernels of fungus (good luck making that sound appetizing on a high end restaurant menu) plucked off the cob easily.
They were quite black on the inside, similar to the gills of a mushroom. The outside of the fungus was a light grey with varying shades of grey throughout. This smut was around 50 shades of grey.
I sautéed my smut in butter, as one does, and then opened up one of my premade quesadillas and stuck them in. I then reheated everything in the oven and got ready to muster up the courage to eat it.
Before eating the quesadilla I plucked a couple of smuts out of the pan and ate them. They didn't taste like much of anything. Since reading on Google that the taste was "indescribable" I was getting ready to come up with all kinds of wonderful adjectives to describe the tastes. After eating a couple I realized the taste is indescribable because it's hard to describe what nothing tastes like.
I cut my quesadilla into slices and ate it for dinner. I started to feel a bit queasy after the first couple of bites. The smut didn't taste of very much but they have the same texture as ... mushrooms. Which as everyone knows is the same disgusting texture as tongue. Or warts. But mainly my aversion to corn smut was entirely psychological. It's ugly. Ugly enough to convince my stomach it's also poisonous even though it isn't.
I'm not sure what it is that has chefs raving about corn smut. I suspect it's the fact that smut is rare in North America because it only happens spontaneously and we always put more value on things that are rare.
Personally? I'd rather eat a common cob of corn.
But I couldn't live with myself without trying it because I may never encounter corn smut again. This is the same line of logic that me to try barnacles in the 90's and a spiral perm in the 80's.
If you grow corn or buy corn and see these grey globules growing out of it know that what you're witnessing is a rare pheomenon.
A food I do not like.
~
So? Would you? Would you eat smut?
We had huitlacoche (corn fungus) quesadillas at a fabulous Mexican restaurant in DC this past year. Delicious!!! Not sure how they were prepared compared to how you made them, but I think it would be worth trying again. When the pandemic is over we’re planning a trek to Maxwell street market in Chicago since we heard there is a vendor that makes smut tacos.
The Washington Post had an article about this just recently:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-mexican-cuisine-its-a-delicacy-but-in-my-childhood-memory-its-a-monster/2018/08/17/668ec2ae-a23a-11e8-83d2-70203b8d7b44_story.html
: )
I'll have a look later, but seeing the word monster in the title makes me think, Yep - these people get it. It is a grotesque monster, lol. ~ karen!
First thing that popped into my head was..is she going to cut that part off and eat the beautiful part of the cob??? Ok ok, the FIRST thing was, wow...very phalluslike, must say.
I would definitely not try eating that grey ghoulish corn....looks like zombie corn.
It tasted a bit like zombie corn too. ~ karen!
Farmer Hancock, the farmer family for whom our county is named, told us that corn smut is a delicacy in Asia. Its hurl-worthy in my opinion.
That is SO GROSSSS...........
it made me gag reading your post.....and the picture.....ewwwww I can't believe I've lived this long without knowing this....honestly I wish I still didn't know it.....
I often wonder (as I consider some unappetizing looking delicacy) just what level of starvation prompted that first soul to taste it. Did they eat it, then say "hmm, maybe with a cream sauce?"
Also, imagine the popcorn.
We had that the first time we grew corn. It looks so nasty! There are Amazon ads for smutty porn and smutty erotica videos at the botto of this post. 🤣
omg, lol. I haven't noticed. ~ karen!
Analytics... such fun.
Gag! No, no way, no chance, nope, nuh uh, not in this life time. In fact, I could have gone the rest of my life without even knowing it existed. And of course I can’t 'unsee' it. I know beauty is only skin deep but damn, ugly goes right to the bone. And that is u.g.l.y.
If pressed about whose word I’d take, yours or some fancy-schmancy chef, Imma go with you. Every time.
Thanks for taking one for the team, you are a special kind of brave and one of my heroines.
Teri on the left coast where everything tastes smoky right now.
Oh yes! You're going to have to start wearing masks out there! Yikes. :/ ~ karen!
Nope.
I’m sorry but it kinda looks like “toe beans” from a cat, lol! I don’t like mushrooms (too much info about fungi in microbiology) so gonna give this one a hard pass. 😬
I would run from something that looked like it oozed out of a giant pimple and then hardened. AND you fried that sucker up and ate it. You are pone BRAVE, badass woman!!
I don't think I've ever read so many No's in any comment section, ever and I'm counting all the ones I've read about questionable looking things in the luxury market 😊
I have seen alot of things in my years as an OR nurse but that is just wrong. I'm getting gaggy trying to erase that visual from my retinas. Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.
Karen, I love corn & I also love mushrooms -- That being said - there is no way - NO WAY - NO HOW that I would ever put that crappy looking crap in my mouth. Good for you for trying it but not for me.
My first attempt at trying to grown some corn ended up with several "infected" with smut. For some strange reason, I knew what it was. It's one of pieces of knowledge that popped into my mind and I have no idea how I knew it! Haven't grown corn since and no way would I eat it!
Nope. Nopity Nope. Don't even want to look at it, let alone eat it. If I ever opened an ear of corn with that disgusting mess inside it, I'd hurl it right into the garbage and then take the garbage out to the can, and the can out to the curb, so it couldn't crawl back to the house and kill me in the middle of the night. And if I were you, I'd take an escort with me to the corn stand, from now on.
Bwaaahhahahaaaa! Sweet jesus, great post. And everyone is being RIDICULOUSLY polite about the elephant in the room: look at the shape of that thing. Thank you Karen for (I think) subtly layering some verbal and visual clues so you didn't have to state the obvious. You could have gone really blue with this. Like, navy. Your classy restraint is inspiring.
You asked would I eat it .... ah no , I am with Shawna in Charleston I would have removed entire plant from my garden while wearing a hazmat suit. I definitely don’t have your stomach lol. An Chefs the use it are I am sure raking in the big bucks for the dishes they use it in . Guess that’s why I don’t like fancy dishes I like to know what the heck I am eating lol.
An you just gave me another reason not to trust them hottie tottering chefs. 😃
Thank you so much for posting this and for those of you who posted the web articles. I started my diet today and those pictures of that "stuff" in the cans and on the ears, is a great reinforcement for me to not eat! Yup, that has cured my craving for a sweet. I think I can wait until lunch for my next meal that won't have anything black or have corn in it! I will have to print out those pictures and put them on my fridge.
Cooking/recipe has to be the difference in taste opinions. One Easter, the rabbit brought weird tasting jelly beans (snot, vomit, ear wax, etc.) just the names are revolting. The kids LOVED this and tried every one - mostly spitting them out but still loved it. One late comer that was a bit of a complainer and mostly came for the food then left, tried some without knowing what he was doing. He ran to the door, spit, and left. It was priceless. Maybe if he shows up again, I can make some Corn Smut cracker dip, just especially for him. LOL So glad you posted this as I would hate to die without trying what might be the best thing I'd ever tasted. You fixed that particular problem for me. Thanks.