Smoked Corn on the Cob Recipe: How to Serve the Side Dish

Fresh corn’s satisfying sweetness becomes more complex when charred and crispy from a grill. Smoking ears of corn over low heat for a more extended period creates an intriguing and subtle middle ground: tender, juicy kernels of sweet corn with a woodsy, aromatic top note that’s lost with traditional high-and-fast grilling.

Serve smoked corn on the cob as a standalone appetizer or side dish or as part of a spread of BBQ classics. Here are a few ideas:

• Aioli or crema: For a more decadent take on buttered corn, serve smoked corn with a seasoned aioli or Mexican crema for spreading directly on the cob. Add fresh chopped herbs like cilantro or the spices of your choosing. Try lime crema or spicy-sweet chipotle aioli or combine sour cream with your favorite hot sauce.
• Browned butter: The nutty, caramelized notes of brown butter are a natural fit for salt and smoke flavor. Once the cobs are cool enough to handle, remove the kernels with a sharp knife, toss them with brown butter, and season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Taco fixings: Add dimension and texture to any taco with a spoonful of smoked corn kernels. Smoked corn goes especially well with garlicky shrimp, roasted peppers, and fresh nopales (cactus).
  

Thanks to the relatively low temperatures, smoking corn on the cob may be even easier than grilling it. Here are a few tips for beginners:

1. 1. Use an electric smoker. An electric smoker is an outdoor cooking device that smokes food using hot electric rods as a primary heat source. Compared to their charcoal-burning counterparts, these smokers are cleaner to operate and accommodate a wider variety of designs. Nearly all have either a cast-iron or stainless steel construction and consist of a cooking chamber, an electric heating element, grill racks, a water pan, and the option for wood to burn alongside the electric heaters and give the corn its smoky flavor.
2. 2. Soak the cobs in their husks before smoking. Many recipes recommend first soaking ears of corn in cool water to dampen the papery corn husks and soak up as much moisture into the kernels as possible. While the husks act as a wrapper during the cooking process, be sure to remove the silk before smoking.
3. 3. Choose the wood chips or pellets. The choice of smoking wood is personal, dictated by how strong you’d like the smoky effects to be. You can pair corn with delicate, aromatic fruit woods like apple and peach—a common choice for vegetable-based smoker recipes and lighter proteins with shorter cook times—or stronger-flavored woods like hickory, maple, and mesquite. Fruit woods burn faster than oak and hickory and produce smoke with an extremely subtle and well-rounded fruity sweetness. Mesquite also burns hot and fast, produces lots of smoke, and has an intensely savory, earthy flavor, while hickory has a strong, smoky flavor typically associated with bacon.