Corn. White vs Yellow

[slewfoot]

Do you find a discernable taste difference between white corn and yellow corn?
Or perhaps a textural difference?
Prehaps more importantly,
is there a nutritional difference?

Opine, please.

[pikiliz]

I will say this I make ceviche alot and I add grilled/roasted corn to it as well as other things,but i find the skin on white corn burns faster than yellow and does not have as good a flavor as yellow when roasted/grilled. to me it seems the yellow has a tougher skin that lends it self better to direct fire

[bluemoon4515]

I like white corn better, it's sweeter than yellow...especially when I'm buying fresh from the farmer's market or roadside stand.

[slewfoot]

OP here.
Glad I could garner such enthusiasm.
And yes, I am sincere. On my small patch of planet corn is still available (albeit of lesser quality) during the coming months.

Having skipped the obvious question in my original post,
I'm from the white corn camp. Have fun all.

[Beckyleach]

White corn has a more delicate flavor, in my opinion...and it's just the BEST, dang it! (of course, this review was brought to you by a biased former Southerner who thinks nothing is worth growing but Silver Queen. ;-)

[Karl S]

It's funny how corn fads wax and wane. Silver Queen is, IIRC, a post-WW2 hybrid - it helped repopularize white corn after 2 generations of dominance by yellow corn. Golden Bantam, the iconic yellow corn, was introduced only a little over 100 years ago. But before it, white corn was the norm for sweet corn, and eating sweet corn was itself relatively novel in the longer history of corn/maize. Silver Queen became so iconic that many farmstands advertize it even though they are actually selling newer (sweeter) hybrids.

[jumpingmonk]

I think that part of the novelty may have had something to do with the the fact that sweetcorn as we currently define it (corn with the mutant gene that keeps the sugar in the "milk stage" (when corn on the cob is actually eaten ) from converting into starch) required a new paradigm to really take off, namely the concept of growing corn SPECIFICALLY for consumption as sweetcorn. The gene mutation itself is quite ancient (there are out and out Native American sweetcorn varities that go back thousands of years) , and has occured many times in many places. However up until relitievely recently the gene was usally looked at as a defect, since that sugary stuff cant really be used for much of anything else (some SW tribes use it to make a kind of pinole and for some quick energy foods, but those are the only real uses I ever seen for fully mature sweetcorn) and is a LOT more vulnerable to insect damage (partiucalry if you need to bring some of it to maturity so you'll have seed for the next year). In many places where corn was a staple the idea of devoting field space to a corn you could really use only as a fresh vegetable would have been ludicrous, What most people did was grown roasting corns corns that you could pick a few cobs from in the milk stage to eat as corn on the cob and you left the rest to convert and turn into grinding corn. In some ways it was the rise in urbanization that helped sweetcorn hav its day, since one of the big disadvatages of the old roasting is that they start convering sugar into starch almost instantly after there picked so they really were only sweet an platable if you got them cooked almost IMMEDIATELY (the old rule was actually not to pick the corn until the cooking water was already boiling) which pretty much ruled out non local consuoption. Sweetcorn with the gene cant convert to starch so it stays sweet for a long long time making it possible to ship.
In some ways this old roasting also explins why most corn on the cob are either white, yellow or a mix of the two, most of the other corn colors are as I mentioend in a differnt layer, one that doesnt start forming until the kernel is fairly mature by which time, in non sweet corn the sugar has long since gone starchy. Yellow and white was all you could get, so yellow and white was what people became used to even today there are only about two dozen or so commecial strains of sweetcorn that produce other colors (most of which have a second gene mutation that makes them "color up" a lot earlier) and at least half of those are fairly recent crosses done with the intent of making colorful corn on the cob. I actuatually grow multicolored sweetcorn in my garden in the summers just for the novelty (some othe this is in fact decended from voulunteer sweetcorn, which is what you get when sweetcorn pollen get onto something like ornamental corn, thats how I got a strain that produces white cobs whose kernels have blue polka dots)

[Beckyleach]

It seems to us, though, that the sweeter white hybrids lack the intensity of FLAVOR that keeps Silver Queen on her throne, so far. ;-)

[maggoiomail]

Agreed! I guess our culture bows to the sweet, now. To me white corn tastes of nothing but sweet, whereas yellow actually does taste like CORN.
It's hard to find even at natural food stores in san francisco. What to do?
Hard to grow my own corn in S.F. ..

[junescook]

I have to agree with maggoiomail. Later in the season when when both yellow and white varieties are available, I will cook both (early in the season only bicolors are commonly available here in CT). Tasting them side-by-side, the white is sweet but does not has very much flavor while the yellow is more corny but less blandly sweet.

[Uncle Bob]

I enjoy eating Yellow, White, Sweets or Dents...I enjoy them all for what they are....
However I only drink Yellow Dent varieties....:))

Fun!

[bushwickgirl]

"However I only drink Yellow Dent varieties....:))"
Uncle Bob, I'm inclined to do the same.

My parents grew the old Butter & Sugar variety back in the '60s, now that was some corn.
Now, even though I live in NYC, we get great corn from NJ and Long Island.

[lanningsmith]

I lurk here a good bit, but I've never replied to a post before. I registered just for this one. :-)

I have grown both Hickory King (a traditional white) and Yellow Dent (a traditional yellow, obviously) and they are nothing alike. I only eat a little bit fresh, as I grind the bulk in a little stone mill for cornmeal and grits.

The yellow corn tastes about as you'd expect, but the white has a much more pronounced, fresher, and more corn-like taste if you catch my meaning. Things made from the Hickory King meal taste like fresh corn out in the field.

But those are old varieties, and probably not much like what I typically see in the store. For one, they've got much less sugar in them, and produce a tougher, mealier kernel. Much of what shows up at the grocery store are hybrid species bred to be sweeter and softer. In store corn I'd be hard pressed to tell yellow and white apart.

I would guess the older varieties have different nutritional profiles than the hybrid stuff, probably most notably in the ratio of protein to carbohydrate.

[c oliver]

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Dark Side :) And anyone who votes for white over yellow corn... well, you're in tight with me anyway :) Keep posting please, okay?

[1sweetpea]

Here in southern Ontario (Canada) we grow some of the sweetest peaches and cream corn I've ever tasted. The white and yellow kernels taste the same. However, when I've bought corn in the off-season, that's been brought in from elsewhere, I generally find that the white kernel corn is less starchy and less sweet, while yellow corn is starchier and sweeter. I imagine that the starchiness is partly due to the length of time that the corn has been off the stalk. Like peas, I find that once they're picked, they become really tough and starchy very quickly. It would be interesting to do a taste test of white and yellow corn that's been just picked, versus samples that are a day old, a few days old, a week old, etc. I wonder if that would affect the sweetness more than anything?

[c oliver]

I'm sure that has been done and that the difference(s) is remarkable.

[Ruth Lafler]

Corn can't be *both* more starchy and more sweet. The starch comes from sugar that converts to starch after the corn is picked. Most of the white corn grown these days is supersweet hybrids that are sweeter and less starchy because they've been bred to keep their sugar content longer.

[Ruth Lafler]

The problem I have with white corn is that it's almost completely driven out yellow corn, which I prefer. This summer I don't think I saw *any* yellow corn at the farmers market. It was all super sweet white for people who want their corn to taste more like sugar than like corn. I think next year I'll have to grow my own yellow corn!

[pikawicca]

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any "heirloom" corn in years. Consumers seem to want the super-sweet varieties. They keep longer, but have far less "corny" flavor.

This is in reponse to lanningsmith's post. Don't know how it got down here.

[c oliver]

I just love white corn. I prefer all corn from a farmer's market but will eat white corn from the grocery. I won't eat yellow corn from the grocery. May be all in my head ---- but, hey, don't try to part me from my irrationality.

[pikawicca]

When I'm buying fresh corn from the farmers' market, I get bi-color. (Talk about waffling!)

[c oliver]

Doesn't strike me as YOUR MO :) Sometimes bi-color is the best I can get.

[pikawicca]

I try to hold it together. I have to say that my corn vendor thinks that color preference is silly. I disagree, but it's all moot for the next 7 months.

[c oliver]

Ain't that sad. Is the OP a sadist? :)

[pikawicca]

Unfortunately (for the purpose of our amusement) I think the OP is sincere. And as I circulate at the market in the summer, I hear many folks asking this question.

[jumpingmonk]

It might be interesting some time to actually do a color by color nutrional analysis of corn colors. Ideally One might want to get the most colorful cob of Indain corn one could get and do a kernel by kernel nutrional anaysis (I'm mostly kidding here) so we could find out not only white ,yellow, and blue but also pink, green,turquoise, red, brown,etc (I'm not kidding about this all of these colors are found)
It is ture that blue corn supposed contains lysine but I think thats a function of the type of corn that ther blue corn is, not the blueness in and of itself. it might be interesting to check the lysine of the odd white kernel that shows up in most blue corn strains. The blue pigment (like most corn colors) is only actually in a very very thin layer in the kernel, unless it is really really concetrated i Have diffuculty believing that that tiny mass can add apprecialby to the amino acid content of the whole kernel meal.
If you looking for thoer nutrients, most of the reds and purples in corn come from anthocyanins, so by the above logic red or purple corn might possibly be somewhat better for your heart, and super purples still better (maybe thats where the S, americnas got the idea for chicha morado.)

[pikawicca]

That's all very well and good, but I eat corn because it tastes good. Nutritional content doesn't really play into it.

[Val]

I am quite sure that the more color any vegetable has, the more nutritious it is...so I think that yellow corn is better nutritionally than white and check this out...blue corn is (probably) more nutritious than either yellow or white! It has lysine (an amino acid) which the others don't have. And I know I've read this about yellow vs. white corn, but right now I can't find my source...drat!!! I always seek out yellow corn tortillas vs. white corn tortillas for that reason when I need to buy tortillas (seems like they are harder and harder to find, too!)...will keep looking for my source. Corn is a whole grain, no matter what color, so that's also a plus. For more information than you probably care to read about...LOL..:
http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=90#descr

and HERE's the article promoting yellow corn...has to do with lutein and eye health:
http://www.macular.org/nutrition/inde...

[FlyFish]

According to the information in the USDA nutritional database (http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp...), white and yellow corn have exactly the same amount of lysine (0.137 g per 100 g), and generally appear to be pretty similar for all of the dozens of nutrients listed there. No data on blue corn, or any other colors.

[pikawicca]

I don't think there's a difference in taste or nutrition. There are different varieties of white and yellow corn, and they certainly don't taste the same based on color.