Elote (Mexican Grilled Corn)

My weekly supermarket trip derailed the plan to continue with egg/breakfast items. Fresh corn was on sale, and grilled corn is lip-smackingly good, whether served dressed up on straight on the cob. Having been away from NYC for a while now, I haven't had the grilled corn from Cafe Habana for a long time, so I decided to make a slight departure from my lesson plan. And since the textbook didn't have any tidbits on grilling corn, I winged it with info from the internet.

Elote is Mexican grilled corn, a street food, and I loves me some street food. I started off by heating my electric grill to full blast (425 degrees). I stripped off the husk (the leafy green part) and the silk (the yellow threads) of the corn, and then rinsed them underwater; not sure if you need to do that for corn since the husks should protect it, but I guess it's force of habit.


The corn then went onto the grill to be cooked until nice little black marks appeared all around. I placed the corn so that they touched each other, and covered them with a loose tin-foil tent, both of which was to keep the heat around the corn as much as possible. Even with those measures though it took a good 25-30 minutes to get the corn cooked all around.


While the corn was grilling, I prepared the dressing. This super-duper tasty concoction is merely some mayonnaise (I used light mayo), and queso cotija, a firm, crumbly Mexican cheese with a sharp and salty taste. I understand that this sounds rather gross, but you're going to have to trust me.


A handful of the grated cheese went into the mayo to make sweet, beautiful dressing love. When the corn was ready, I slathered on the mayo-cheese.


The final touches to this were to sprinkle some cayenne pepper (the magic red dust here) on top, and then served with wedges of lime.


If you've never had this treat before, you must try it. Simultaneously sweet, spicy, tart, and tangy...aye caramba!

Knowledge Nuggets

1) Some of the internet info called for grilling the corn in a few leaves of husk, after soaking it in water for about 15 minutes. That would actually be steaming the corn (wet heat) and not grilling the corn (dry heat). Plus you won't get those lovely grill marks.

2) If you cannot find queso cotija in your international dairy section, try queso fresco or queso seco; they all taste similar to me.