It came up a few times with my friends in Southern California. There you can buy this wonderful stuff called Elote from street side carts. It’s a type of corn treat made in Mexico and California where they grill the corn covered in delicious toppings like chili powder, mayonnaise, sour cream and other great stuff.
I forget how the subject came up when I was talking to Mom and Dad up here in Wisconsin, but we decided to try it out on our own. Corn was easy enough to find at a local farm stand. The rest was reading a few recipes and deciding on ingredients. After trying it, I also decided on a better method (that I did not utilize so the photos will look weird.
6 ears corn
6 Tbs Mayonnaise
2 Tbs Chili Powder
1 Tbs Garlic Salt
1 Tbs Black pepper
1/2 Lime, cut into six pieces
heavy duty aluminum foil
First, get a campfire going really hot with nice white coals. Or use an outdoor grill. Mix the dry spices with the mayonnaise. Get six equal sized pieces of heavy duty aluminum foil cut and ready to go. Smear corn with mayonnaise mixture, make sure to get a good even coating. Squeeze lime juice on it then wrap tightly in the foil leaving the lime slice inside.
When it’s all wrapped up nice and tight in the foil you’re ready to cook. Place it right on the hottest part of the fire carefully. You don’t want to burn yourself of course. If you’re using a grill this will take more time and you’ll get less of the charred sections that you’re looking for, but it’s still tasty.
It doesn’t take long on the campfire, maybe 5 minutes a side and you’ll want to turn it a few times. Use your best judgement with this. On the grill it will take longer to get those nice charred black bits that you want so be patient.
That’s the idea. When parts of it are nice and crispy and the mayo has melted mostly through it’s all done. Serve once they cooled off enough to open and definitely eat with those little corn forks. The flavors penetrate very well and you can end up with very sweet, tasty corn. Enjoy.
