Vegetables
Sweetcorn
High sugar, so it chars fast and tastes better for it.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
Sweetcorn kernels are individually sealed packets of starch and sugar behind a tough skin, which is why they can take direct high heat without collapsing the way a courgette does. The sugar caramelises and the skins blister and char, producing the flavour that boiling cannot. The cob itself is dense and slow, which does not matter because it is not being eaten. Halving is a fitting decision rather than a cooking one, but it also puts a cut face against the airflow, which browns.
Why the cut matters
One manufacturer prints six minutes at 190°C for a cob halved to fit, and does not say whether it is fresh or frozen. It is one of the few vegetables where visible charring is the objective rather than an overrun.
Cooking pages
- Corn on the cob — Fresh whole ears get twelve to eighteen minutes at 200°C in one manufacturer's charts for two machines; two other figures name no state.
This page gives no cooking answer of its own. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. Any figure mentioned above is one manufacturer’s, and the page for the cut says which machine, quantity and state it was printed for, or that the manufacturer named no state.