Make This Creamy-Salty, Toasty-Sweet Grilled Corn Before Summer Ends

Truly fresh corn, plucked from the field, doesn’t need much in the way of cooking (or buttering). Boil or steam it for a few minutes and it’s ready to go. But not everyone lives near a corn field, and produce starts to lose its flavor the moment it’s been picked. It doesn’t hurt to have a flavor-packed recipe at the ready for lackluster grocery store cobs (or those ears that have been sitting in your fridge a few days).

Kenji Lopez-Alt has such a recipe, and he recently shared his method with Chris Kimball on Milk Street Radio. He steams the corn, slathers the ears in a compound butter, chars them, then slathers them with butter again.

Using this clever method, we developed Grilled Corn with Miso Butter and Sesame Salt. The savory flavors highlight the sweetness of the corn without obscuring it. All that flavor might be overkill if you’re working with farm-fresh, just-picked corn but, as Chris Kimball explains, this isn’t for just-picked corn: “It’s for everything else.”

You’ll need a two-zone setup

Like nearly all grilling recipes, you’ll need to set up two zones on your grill: one hot and one cooler. On a gas grill, the hot side is where the flames are; on charcoal, it’s directly over the coals, which should be pushed to one side.

How to steam corn on a grill

To keep the cooking simple and contain the corn and steaming liquid, we steam the corn in a disposable aluminum pan. We use sake as the liquid, whisking it with umami-rich miso compound butter, brightening lime juice, savory sesame oil and funky, fermented white pepper. The corn is steamed in this buttery, boozy bath—on the cool side of the grill—until the kernels are plump and tender.

What is compound butter?

Compound butter sounds excessively fancy, but it’s just butter with other ingredients mixed in for flavoring. Fresh herbs, alliums, citrus zest and even anchovies all are used to make compound butter. Sometimes, the butter is shaped and chilled, then sliced and plunked on a hot steak or potato, but we’re keeping our compound butter in its melted state—and we’re flavoring it with umami-packed miso.

Add 6 generous tablespoons of butter and a couple spoonfuls of miso to the pan, then whisk as the butter melts until the mixture is emulsified and glossy. Pour it into a disposable aluminum pan, then stir in the sake, lime juice, sesame oil white pepper.

What is gomasio?

Gomasio is Japanese sesame salt. It’s a multipurpose seasoning—in addition to this buttery corn, you should sprinkle this toasty, nutty salt on rice, stir-fries and grilled foods of all sorts.

Sesame seeds packaged in jars and sold on the supermarket spice rack usually are hulled. We prefer unhulled seeds—they are larger, rounder, appear more plump, and have a richer, nuttier flavor.

How to toast sesame seeds

“I toast spices a lot,” said Chris. “Anytime you’re toasting anything, keep in mind that nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens...then everything happens in about 15 seconds, so you want to pay attention.”

Add the seeds and salt to a skillet and stir and toss continuously, until they’re golden brown and wisps of smoke rise from the pan. Any 8-inch skillet is up to the task, but Chris favors this cast iron skillet.

Spice grinder or mortar and pestle?

“You can do this in a spice grinder or small coffee grinder—I don’t like those,” said Chris. “I don’t like the way they grind. I love a mortar and pestle.” You want to “smush about half of it,” combining the toasted seeds with the salt. “Half of it will still be whole seeds; other half will be ground.”

How to steam-grill corn

Add your shucked ears to the aluminum pan, turning them to coat, then cover the pan with foil and place it on the cooler side of the grill, away from the coal or flames. Steam for 10-15 minutes. “Then, when the grill is really nice and hot, finish it up directly on the grill, with the hot coals...get it nice and charred.”

Toss it back in the butter-booze bath, rotating as needed to give it a final coating, then finish with scallions and your homemade gomasio.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.