'In the Leaf' Solar Cooked Sweetcorn

Freshly harvested home grown sweetcorn cobs are cooked in their leaves using a solar cooker to get that xtra yummy flavour.

This year's corn was not the best I've ever grown but the advantage is that the small cobs fit really nicely in the solar cooker. Being cylindrical, they're also the perfect shaped vegetable for the cooker's insertion tubes.

• Freshly harvested sweetcorn
• Gosun Solar Cooker

If the cobs look nice and fat, then that is the first good sign, but to be sure that they are ready, I make a small inspection in the foliage to look for the nice plump golden chunks of corn.

The larger leaves are removed from the cobs with just enough left to stop the corn from drying out when being cooked. This is a great tip for cooking corn and can be used in other ovens and even on the BBQ.

Notice that at this stage the oven reflectors are up - this stops the oven from getting hot before the food is put in or otherwise the vacuum tube can break due to thermal shock.

The reflectors are now opened and the cooker pointed directly into the Autumn sunshine. Apparently the cooker will work in the middle of the Winter if there is sunshine.

After 20 minutes, I removed the insertion tube and noticed plenty of steam escaping and that the colour of the leaves had changed from green to a pale yellow - the corn is cooked!

Before getting too excited, I closed up the cooker from the sun.

Don't cut the leaves off - just open them up as shown as this is a really good way of holding the corn without getting your fingers covered in hot butter - use the leaves as a handle!

Apply liberal quantities of real butter (not margarine) and eat, savouring the exquisite taste of fresh, in the leaf, cooking.

Please feel free to add suggestions for improving this technique in the comments section below. This instructable will be updated if I have missed anything.

Please in the competitions - top right - Thanks!