Southern Sour Corn Recipe - How to Make Lacto Fermented Corn (2024)

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am always looking for some new thing to ferment, preserve or pickle. So when I learned about Southern sour corn, I had to make it.

I wish I had some great story to tell about how I first ate this lacto-fermented sweet corn in some West Virginia diner, maybe on top of some chicken fried steak with some crowder peas. Actually, that sounds amazing and I’ll have to make it.

But no, I learned about this Appalachian specialty in Ronni Lundy’s fantastic cookbook Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes. I’ve been cooking a lot from this book lately, and I simply cannot overstate how wonderful a book it is. If you like real Southern food, you need to buy this book.

Sour corn is to corn what sauerkraut is to cabbage. Same deal. Stupid easy to make. Corn, water, salt, and maybe something extra to make it yours. In my case, thinly sliced green cayenne chiles.

A few things you need to know.

• Use Diamond Crystal kosher salt if you want to use my volumetric measurements; other salts will give you a different brine strength. Or you can weigh the amount of corn + water in grams and then add out 2 percent of that weight to the water to make a brine.
• Keep the corn below the level of the water. Floaters will mold up fast. You can use a clean plastic bag will with more brine to do this, or use a pickling plate if you have a crock, or a small regular plate if you have one that works.
• Mold happens. When you see it, skim it off. Usually you’ll get a ropey, icky white mold, mother-of-vinegarish thing. It’s not harmful, but you want to skim it off as the mold can get into your brine and alter the flavor a bit. It’s still fine.
• Keep it simple. Add one or two other things to your sour corn, but remember this is a base condiment, not a finished relish. Of course, you can ferment a full relish if you want, but that’s a different recipe.

How to use your sour corn? Hell, it’s great as a snack. But I like it as a sort of Southern salsa, alongside the aforementioned chicken fried steak, or any other quickly cooked meat; as a side dish to my buttermilk fried quail springs to mind.

I know other people cross cultures and literally use sour corn as a salsa on tacos, which is also excellent. When you come up with a cool way to use it, do me a favor and post it up in the comments section below. Enjoy!