Grilled corn smothered with peanut sauce is a tasty mess
This is one of those recipes that grab me by the name alone, and I hope it does the same for you: Grilled Corn With Peanut Sauce. I adore the former, and I adore the latter, so put the two together, and I’m in heaven.
Cookbook author Rukmini Iyer writes that she got the idea from Indonesian gado-gado — particularly its sauce based on peanut butter, coconut milk and chiles. “It occurred to me that the dressing, slightly adapted, would work beautifully with grilled corn on the cob — and, joy, it did!” she writes in her latest book, “The Green Barbecue.”
A heavily dressed corn on the cob always reminds me of the Mexican staple esquites, a.k.a. elote, but in this case the flavors are distinctly Southeast Asian. It could hardly be easier: After chopping ginger and chile, you whisk together the sauce, grill the corn, and spoon the sauce over the cobs before serving (or let guests do it themselves).
If you want to cook the corn indoors, by all means, do — either in a grill pan or under the broiler. And if you find shucking it to be too much of a pain, you should try my favorite microwave method, which I seem to refine almost every year. Just this month, I read a take on it from America’s Test Kitchen: You cut through the cobs on one end, douse them in water, microwave them for several minutes, and then easily shake them out of the husks. When you hold them by the silk end to do that, the silks come off so easily and cleanly you might never prep corn another way.
Of course, when you make this recipe, those clean cobs get plenty messy again from the sauce — but who cares? When it tastes this good, and you’ve got napkins at the ready, messy just means fun.