A home chef is showing Instagram viewers a creative way to save corn, preventing food waste and keeping the popular staple fresh.
Corn is among the most consumed foods in some parts of the world, but it often goes to waste because it is not stored properly. This hack shows corn lovers a simple way to prevent that from happening.
The scoop
Popular Instagrammer Kaleb Wyse (@wyseguide), who posts videos about "food, garden, and farm life," recently uploaded a Reel explaining in detail how to keep your corn lasting longer while staying fresh.
"Let me show you why I think it's the best way," Wyse tells viewers.
The video begins with the home chef explaining how we should start by adding "husked and cleaned ears of corn to boiling water."
The corn should be submerged in the boiling water for five minutes and then placed in ice water.
Once fully chilled, the corn is removed from the cob with a sharp knife, after which each strip of corn should be broken up by hand and then stored in a reusable container in the freezer.
How it's helping
The lesson provided in the video shows us another way to prevent food waste, which is a major issue around the world. The U.S. is definitely no exception, where 42 billion pounds of food from homes is thrown out each year, according to Feeding America.
The most obvious problem with food waste is that it's also wasting money. Anytime we throw away food we purchased, we're essentially just throwing away money — and nobody would just throw a $20 bill in the garbage.
Food waste is also a major factor among the human activities that pollute the air and warm the planet, due to all of the energy required to grow produce, package it, and transport it to our stores and farmers' markets.
Up to 10% of harmful carbon pollution worldwide is from wasted food, according to a United Nations report. One reason is transportation since food needs to be taken from one place to another by way of trucks and other vehicles. This requires the burning of dirty energy sources, such as oil and gas.
Around 6% of polluting gases released from food production come from the transportation sector. However, a much larger percentage — about a quarter of the planet-warming gases from the food sector — comes from land use, which includes trees being chopped down to make room for food production.
If enough of the global population learned and adopted the food-saving hacks often posted on social media, such as this one, we could significantly slim down the amount of food wasted each year.
What everyone's saying
"Easy and so worth doing," one commenter expressed.
"I've frozen corn since I was a child. We always scraped the ears of corn after cutting the kernels off. Made the corn creamy. Yummy!" another added.
Additional advice came from a person who said it's good to "put the cobs on the center of a cake bundt pan and cut the corn," explaining that "it will fall right into the pan. Less mess."
They concluded by thanking Wyse for being "so amazing!"
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