Miso Butter Corn is a recipe that proves simple can be amazing! The magic of a dab of miso. 🙂 This sautéed corn is a side dish that goes with everything, from chicken rissoles to gyoza. Or make a meal out of it with a fried egg, avocado and tortillas for stuffing.
Miso butter corn
The world has David Chang to thank for the miracle that is sautéed corn with miso and butter. He wasn’t the first to make it but he was certainly the one who made it famous! In fact, it was so wildly popular at his New York restaurant that he took it off the menu because he became known as the corn restaurant that happened to serve noodles!
Miso, in case you are new to it, is a soy bean paste that is probably best known as the base for miso soup (here’s my mum’s recipe). A ton of savoury flavour packed into one innocent looking tub (jar/packet). However, because it’s such a powerful ingredient, it is used for so many other dishes, for both Japanese and Western dishes.
Today’s miso corn is a great example. A fusion Asian dish starring miso – err, yes, and corn!
Ingredients in Miso Butter Sautéed Corn
Here’s what you need to make this. Not many ingredients!
Miso butter and other ingredients
Miso – There are all sorts of miso varieties, find one labelled “white miso” or “shiro miso” (“shiro” means “white” in Japanese). Red miso is also fine but use a little less – about 1 heaped tablespoon (miso flavour is a little more intense). (PS My mum has a great little summary on different types of miso in her Miso Soup recipe).
Bacon – Streaky is the best because we use the bacon fat to cook the corn. It’s what makes this dish so good!
Butter – Unsalted, this dish has enough salt from the bacon and miso. If you only have salted, dial back the miso slightly.
Garlic – Because I don’t cook corn without it if butter is also present.
Cooking sake – One of the 3 essential sauces in Japanese cooking, it’s a rice wine made for cooking that you can find in the Asian section of grocery stores these days. It’s used to deglaze the pan after cooking the corn (a cooking term which means to use a liquid to dissolve golden bits stuck on the base of the pan to mix into the sauce) and it adds a touch of extra savouriness into this dish. The alcohol cooks out because it evaporates.
Substitute with mirin or Chinese cooking wine, or water (we just want some liquid to deglaze the pan).
Green onion – For freshness. Cut it a little chunkier than the typical “finely sliced” that is often called for in recipes. We want a decent hit because it’s the freshness here.
White pepper – I use white because it’s habit in Japanese recipes. (Just because this recipe has a touch of miso in it, my brain thinks I’m in the Japanese food cooking sphere). But black pepper is fine too.
Also – Corn!
Yes, we need corn! 😂 Using corn fresh cut off the cob is best because it’s dry so it sautés better for lovely golden spots. Also, flavour (sweeter, better) and texture (firmer, not soggy).
Frozen corn is the next best alternative – use it from frozen but expect to cook longer (thaw>dry>cook) with canned bringing up the rear (it’s the wettest so it doesn’t sauté as well).
Here’s how I cut the corn off the cob without the kernels flying all over the kitchen – large bowl, prop the corn up on a little dish, small knife.
How to cook Miso Butter Corn
This recipe starts by sautéing bacon so the corn can be cooked in the bacon fat for extra tastiness! Then the miso butter is just stirred through at the end until it melts through.
Cut corn off the cob – As mentioned above, prop the corn up on a small ramekin or similar inside a large bowl. Stand upright and cut the kernels off using a small knife. The bowl will catch the kernels so they don’t fly all over your kitchen! A bundt pan also works.
Miso butter – Mix the miso and softened butter until combined.
Cook bacon in its own fat until golden. The fat in the bacon will melt as the pan heats up, so start with a cold pan. No extra oil needed – as long as you use streaky bacon!
Bacon fat – Remove the bacon using a slotted spoon so you keep as much bacon fat in the pan as possible. Then add the corn.
Cook the corn for 4 to 5 minutes until there’s light golden spots, and the corn is sweet and cooked through. (Fresh corn is firmer than frozen and canned corn). To do this, just stir every minute rather than stirring constantly. This gives the corn a chance to get the golden spots.
Add garlic towards the end of the cooking time, else it will burn!
Deglaze – Add the cooking sake and stir until it evaporates. We only use 2 tablespoons so it will evaporate quickly, about 15 seconds or so. The purpose of this step (called deglazing) is to dissolve the golden bits on the base of the pan left from sautéing the corn into the mixture. Those golden bits are called fond and it’s free flavour!
Miso butter – Turn off the stove then stir to melt the miso butter through the corn. We don’t want to sizzle the butter because the miso caramelises quite easily. We want glossy silk buttery sauce through our corn!
Toss the bacon and green onion in, then serve!
Matters of serving
I love how versatile this dish is.
It’s a corn side dish packed with so much flavour that you will happily eat it by the spoonful. Who cares what the main dish is, just gimme all the Miso Butter Corn!
As mentioned earlier, despite the miso in it, this doesn’t taste Japanese or Asian. It’s universally tasty and the flavour profile is such that I wouldn’t hesitate to serve it alongside a pile of Crispy Herb Roasted Chicken with gravy or a Pork Tenderloin with Creamy Mustard Sauce. But then, it’s just at home with Asian mains like Chinese Char Sui BBQ Pork, a big plate of gyoza or Grilled Marinated Thai Chicken (Gai Yang).
But my favourite is to turn it into a meal by adding a fried egg, burst roast cherry tomatoes (10 minutes in the oven), avocado and tortillas for scooping/stuffing.
Breakfast, dinner, lunch, any day of the week.
Yes please!
But don’t worry about how I eat it. Tell me how you’d serve this and what you’d serve it with! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Miso butter corn
Ingredients
Miso butter:
- 30g / 2 tbsp unsalted butter , softened
- 1 1/2 tbsp white miso (shiro miso) (Note 1)
Corn:
- 200g / 7oz streaky bacon , chopped into 1cm / 1/2″ pieces
- 3 cups corn kernels , preferably freshly cut off 3 – 4 corn cobs else frozen thawed (Note 2)
- 2 garlic cloves , finely minced
- 2 tbsp cooking sake , optional (sub mirin or dry sherry, Note 3)
- 1/8 tsp white pepper (sub black pepper)
- 1 cup green onion , cut into 0.5cm/0.2″ slices
Instructions
- Miso butter – Mix butter and miso together in a small bowl until combined.
- Golden bacon – Put bacon in an unheated large non stick pan, no oil. Turn the stove onto medium high heat – as it heats up, the fat will start to melt so the bacon cooks in its own fat. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes until golden, then use a slotted spoon to transfer onto a paper towel lined plate. Reserve bacon fat in the pan.
- Cook corn – Top up with butter if you don’t have 1 tbsp fat left in pan. Still on medium high, add corn, then stir only every minute or so (this lets it get some nice golden spots), for about 5 minutes until corn is just cooked and is sweet. Add garlic, stir for another 30 seconds. Add sake, stir until evaporated (~15 seconds).
- Melt miso butter – Turn off stove. Add miso butter, stir until melted. Add pepper, bacon and green onion, toss until coated with sauce. Serve!
- Serve as a side dish. In a corn taco with a fried egg and avocado (OMG SO GOOD).
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Life of Dozer
Summer has arrived early here in Sydney! (Also a good Dozer size-context photo. BIG!)
I cooked this for lunch today for my husband and I. We ate these with Lebanese bread.
Our 2 teenagers are on overseas holiday. My husband immediately thought of them and commented that they would like this. I’ll have to cook it for them upon their return.
“Flavour bomb” according to my husband
Absolutely fantastic! Never would have thought a corn dish would illicit such high praise! That little bit of miso is a game changer! Going to try the Miso Glazed Eggplant recipe from your book. Hoping you come out with more miso recipes! It’s sold in such large containers that I find it hard to use up very quickly.
The Miso Butter Corn is amazing. So delicious and simple to make.
This was so good my husband lamented being too full to eat any more. Everyone in the family enjoyed the corn this way.
I used 1 spoon miso instead of 1.5 in case it was too strong for the family, I think next time I’d use 1.5 as per the recipe.
Served as one of the side dishes to Cauliflower Steak.
Sorry. To add. Made a batch with and without the bacon. Both were so tasty you could definitely live without the bacon. And that’s saying something seeing as I’m a bacon fan.
Also, since there is no comments section for the book recipe Cauliflower steaks: they were also so good my hubby said “you could prepare road-kill in that way and I’d still eat it” 😂
Oh my, this is delicious! I reheated the leftovers in a pan in the BBQ when I cooked steak and it gave it even more smokey tastiness. Will be a regular in our house
Amazing! More tasty than the marinated fillet steak I served it with
I made this without bacon and it was delicious
We made this at the weekend to go with some marinated pork from our local deli, Simply delicious (as usual). The only – very minor – thing was that because we make our own bacon, from fairly lean belly, we were slightly lacking fat and the bacon tended to dominate.
Don’t tell me!!!!! Use less bacon or buy fattier belly. LOL.
This will be yet ANOTHER Nagi regular.
Hi Nagi, I made this dish and was very taken by it. But, can you tell me what soundtrack you used to accompany your video clip. Very intriguing music. Thanks, George
I made this last night… OMG so easy and SO DELISH… served it as a side to lemon poached chicken breast & garlic sautéed spinach
Made this last night as an aside for BBQd lamb cutlets (and your Antipasto salad- yum!).
The corn salad is delicious, the miso giving an extra layer of flavour. I’ll be making this many more times! So simple and I love room temp dishes when having people over, makes life so much easier.
So glad you enjoyed it Marilla!! Mmmmm, lamb cutlets….
Simple ingredients, but together it was a flavour bomb! What a great and easy side dish. Hope to see more of such recipes!!
So funny you say that, it’s actually what I’m really focussing for Wednesday recipes!! Glad you enjoyed it YL. I’ll bring another miso based recipe soon so you can re-use it! N x
Cooking this tonight as a bed for hoisin glazed chicken wings. I’ll let you know.
(Let you know how badly I stuffed it up probably).
I made it and it turned out surprisingly well. It was delicious, possibly a little too salty but I may have gone overboard with the miso.
Thanks, this one is a “keeper”
This sounds so wonderful and I was salivating as I read the recipe but I can’t eat bacon. Any suggestions about how I can indulge in this but not use bacon? Substitutions? I know it’s hard when it comes to bacon.
Try jackfruit to replace bacon…it’s a great substitute
The recipe uses the bacon fat so at the very least you’ll need to add some oil. As for a bacon substitute, whatever you like – there are plenty of non-meat bacon alternatives, but something like mushrooms or sun dried tomato might be a nice flavour for the dish.
I think it’d be just as good without the bacon.
Great question, I too would love to know a substitute for bacon.
Made this tonight for our family of seven. Everyone loved it! Had it with white soft wraps, roasted cherry tomatoes, fried eggs and garlic butter pan fried flat mushrooms. So good! Another winner. Thanks Nagi! ❤️
Mmmmmmmm YUM!! I love that idea, what a combo. Thanks for the inspiration Chelle!! So glad you enjoyed it – N x
This was delicious. I had all the ingredients on hand. Used red miso instead of white and fresh “end of season” corn. A big hit. Will definitely be making this again. We had fish tacos and Cole slaw and the miso corn worked well as either a taco condiment or side.
Fantastic! Glad you enjoyed it Cathy! Thanks for sharing how you served it – LOVE the idea of pairing it with fish tacos. N x
I’ve recently had to go dairy free 🙁 I’m still learning about the best substitutes for different occasions – would a plant-based butter alternative work for this, or does it have to be proper butter for the flavour?
Hi Jo! I made this with extra virgin olive oil and it was DELICIOUS. Miso works wonders here! N x
Awesome – thank you! Can’t wait to try it!
Sounds great but I can’t have soy. Any alternatives?
Hmmm!!! I have to think!!! Let me come back – N x
Thanks for getting back to me. Hope you can come up with something. I do have some coconut aminos. Will that work?
Please Help! I’ve updated my Apple to ios Monteray 12.7 and now RecipeTinEats recipes will NOT print!!! Disaster!! Can anyone help me figure out what is wrong – (btw – I’ve not had any luck with Apple support.)
Oh no! Let me see if my IT manager can help! – N x