re: Submission Thread for F&DB Corn Challenge Jan 23, 2021

Pork Loin Open-Faced Sliders With Corn Five Ways



My first thought when I saw 'corn' as our ingredient was to use popcorn in some way, so I thought about using popcorn as a pork loin breading, which led me to using cornbread as a base for pork loin slider. Of course any good slider/sandwich/burger needs toppings, and this is a corn challenge, so slider 1 features a creamed corn cream cheese, slider two features a roasted corn salsa verde, and slider three featured a corn cob pepper jelly. For the fifth use of corn I battered some of the pork loin slices with yellow corn grits instead of the white popcorn.

First, the five applications of corn... corn on the cob, corn grits, corn meal, cream style corn, and popping corn.



A few nights ago I made the corn cob pepper jelly, the ingredients are water, corn on the cob, bell peppers, habanero peppers, lemon juice, sugar, and pectin.

I started with 2 quarts of water and boiled the corn cobs for 30 minutes. While that was boiling I chopped up a de-seeded the peppers, then adding fresh lemon juice and putting them through the food processor. After the boil was done I pulled out the corn cobs, strained the water (saving it!) and put the corn cob water back into the boiling pot with the peppers. Once the peppers had boiled down for about 10 more minutes I added the sugar and the corn from one cob, also chopped down. That boiled for a bit longer before adding the pectin to form a jelly... they were jarred in a hot water bath and placed in the fridge to set.







The second topping is a tomatillo salsa verde with roasted corn. The ingredients are tomatillos, jalapenos, corn off the cob, white onion, garlic, and lime juice. This is very simple, the peppers were sliced and de-seeded, the corn cut off the cob, the onion sliced up, then everything other than the limes went into the pan to roast, with help from a cooking torch. Afterwards into the blender with the lime juice until desired consistency.









The third topping was the easiest of all... creamed corn cream cheese. A can of cream style corn (I only used half), a room temp slab of cream cheese, some minced garlic, and little Tony's. Mix it all together and set aside for later.





Now that all three toppings are complete, it's time for some cornbread. This recipe uses flour, corn meal, sugar, baking powder, milk, vegetable oil, an egg, and a bit of not pictured salt. Mix together the dry ingredients (mixing is my sous chef's specialty!) and then whisk in the wet ingredients to form a consistent batter. Into a cooking dish in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes... perfect cornbread.









Finally, the pork. I started with a freaking massive pork loin... cut half off and vacuum sealed it for another day, then cut 10 not quite 1/4" thick slices off. I seasoned them with a bit of Tony's and garlic powder, then did some air popped popcorn, which captured the full attention of my sous chef. He's not as much help as you would think. A bunch of the popcorn got processed down and rest went to keeping that little dude out of trouble. Then all the pork slices went into an egg wash (with a dash or two of hot sauce) and into either the popcorn crumbs or the yellow corn grits. That all went into the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes.













Finally, everything was cooked... each piece of pork got a piece of cornbread sliced in half and one of the three toppings. The cream cheese option got a balsamic drizzle to top it off and since this is a corn challenge, here's a bit of roasted corn on the side.



My final order of preference:
Corn cob pepper jelly
Cream corn cream cheese
Roasted corn salsa verde