Fresh corn was on sale at the grocery store, still in the husk, so I couldn’t pass it up. My plan was to make enough creamed corn to fill my pressure canner.

I picked up 24 cobs because my Bernardin book says it takes about four medium cobs to make one pint of creamed corn. My canner holds five pints, so I figured 20 cobs would be enough to fill the canner, with four cobs left over for the barbecue. Sounded like a good plan.

I put the corn in the fridge overnight and got started the next morning.

The first job was husking all the corn and giving it a good wash. I like to do that over a strainer in the sink so all those little corn silks don’t end up plugging the drain. It saves a lot of cleanup later.

Once everything was cleaned up, I blanched the cobs for four minutes, drained them, and let them cool just enough so I could handle them without burning my hands.

To remove the kernels, I set a smaller bowl upside down inside one of my large stainless mixing bowls. That gives the cob something to sit on while the kernels and all that sweet corn milk fall into the larger bowl instead of all over the counter.

I started by using a serrated knife to cut about halfway through the kernels. Then I scraped the rest of the kernels and the corn milk off the cob with a bread knife. That worked, but after a couple of cobs I switched to a vegetable peeler for the scraping part. It worked much better and made the job a lot easier. Sometimes you find a better way part way through.

When I finished all the cobs, I measured the corn and ended up with 15 cups.

The recipe calls for one cup of water for every two cups of corn, so I needed 6½ cups of water.

Since I have well water, I just used water from the tap. If your water is chlorinated, I’d recommend using bottled water or letting tap water sit out overnight so the chlorine can dissipate before using it.

Here’s where I got a surprise.

Once I added the water to the corn, I had about 21½ cups altogether. That’s enough for over ten pints, not the five pints I was expecting based on the book.

I brought the mixture to a boil, then reduced it to a gentle boil and let it simmer for three minutes.

While that was happening, I kept ten half-pint jars hot in water so they were ready to fill.

After the three minutes, I filled each hot jar, leaving one inch of headspace. I removed the air bubbles, checked the headspace again, and adjusted it if needed.

I wiped the rims with a paper towel dampened with vinegar and also gave each new lid a quick wipe before placing it on the jar. Then I put the bands on finger tight and loaded the jars into the pressure canner.

With the vent open, I heated the canner until I had a steady stream of steam coming out, then exhausted the canner for 10 minutes. After that I closed the vent, brought the canner up to pressure, and processed the jars for 85 minutes, which is the processing time for pints.

One important thing to remember is that creamed corn should only be pressure canned in pint jars or smaller. Larger jars aren’t considered safe for this product.

When the processing time was finished, I turned off the heat and let the canner cool down and depressurize completely on its own. Once the pressure was back to zero, I opened the lid, waited another 10 minutes, and then removed the jars to a towel on the counter to cool and seal.

Since my canner only held part of the batch, I put the remaining creamed corn in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning I brought it back to a boil, simmered it for another three minutes, and repeated the same canning process for the rest.

The biggest surprise from this batch was the yield. According to the book, I expected 20 cobs to make about five pints, which was exactly enough to fill my canner. Instead, those same 20 cobs gave me around ten pints. That’s roughly two medium cobs for every pint instead of four.

Every batch of corn is a little different, but it was a nice surprise to get twice as much as I expected. Having homemade creamed corn sitting on the pantry shelf makes all that work worth it, especially once fresh corn season is over.