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
Corn on the cob, halved to fit, is a six-minute job at 190°C. It is one of the few vegetables where visible charring is the objective rather than an overrun.
Cooking pages
- Corn on the cob — Halved cobs, six minutes at 190°C, and charring is the point.
There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.