Invite Cornnuts for Thanksgiving Dinner
Typically, when drawing up a guest list for a dinner party, they try to minimize the cranks and troublemakers, but on Thanksgiving there is no such luxury, since most of the guest list consists of family members. You may need to invite your uncle, but you can also invite another type of nut – the corn nut.
Corn is the classic Thanksgiving flavor, while corn nuts are a strong corn flavor. They’re also crispy and salty, two more characteristics that are fantastic when you talk about food and not so great when you talk about people. Luckily for us, this blog is about food (not people).
My point is that corn nuts are delicious and can be used in many different ways to increase the amount of crunchy corn in your meal. You can buy fancy cornnuts , also known as quico or cancha, or use ranch-flavored dudes. Both have their uses.
About soups and salads
Toasted corn chunks are easiest to use as a side dish. Use them instead of croutons in a Thanksgiving salad, or sprinkle them on nutmeg soup . You can also serve multiple plates filled with different flavors and allow guests to garnish as they wish.
Top casserole
A casserole is not a casserole without some crunchy layer, and corn nuts bring that freaking crunch. The Jiffy corn casserole (pictured above) is the most obvious choice, but mac and cheese and even green bean casserole can be fun. (I am not suggesting that you substitute corn nuts for crunchy onions, but simply supplement them.) One important note: remember to sprinkle corn nuts on the very top of the casserole to keep them crispy. Anything that gets under the cheese will become chewy.
Mix with filling or dressing
Bon Appetit’s Rick Martinez uses cornnuts in his cornbread dressing to enhance the corn flavor. It’s great. Mixing shredded banal bois with cornbread (and sausage), you get an incredibly banal and slightly unusual dressing. Rick’s recipe looks very good, but you can add 3/4 cup ground cornnuts to any dressing recipe – just sauté them in oil first to bring out their flavor.