This Corn and Miso Butter Orzo Is Poppin'

5-ingredients and 15 minutes

Sometimes recipe inspiration comes from restaurants, holidays or childhood, and sometimes it comes from the dreaded Explore tab on Instagram. This week’s came from the latter. And that’s okay. It’s an easy-peasy vegetarian recipe that can be a quick lunch or dinner any day of the week, but especially right now when sweetcorn is cheap in the shops.

Charred corn is not a new concept but it is delicious and I have been inspired in the past by Carla Lalli Music’s Grilled Corn Salad, and Alison Roman’s Grilled Corn and Scallion Salad.

Seeing 100s of recipes combining corn and miso on the apps, I decided to combine both things here with butter and orzo for a quick and easy dinner. Nothing is original, they say, and they’re right. Spring onions pair really well with corn (as the above salads demonstrate) and so too does the green chilli here which brings out the corn’s sweetness and the miso’s umaminess.

I charred the corn for this recipe on my gas hob because it’s easy and quick – beware that the corn will pop, so stand back. It’s all part of the fun. The recipe below serves 1 but is easy to double or quadruple. You could also replace the orzo with risotto rice (but you’ll need to add more water and cook it for longer).

I recently found out sesame seeds have an impressive amount of iron, so I’ve been trying to eat more of them wherever possible and they go really nicely here. I also love them on top of cheesy baked things, eggs, noodles and pies. Hope you’ll give this one a go! It’s so easy and really quite fun.

Corn and Miso Butter Orzo

1 corn on the cob
3 spring onions, whites sliced to 0.5cm and greens sliced very thinly
90g orzo
30g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large tbsp white miso
1 skinny green chilli (optional), thinly sliced
Sesame seeds to garnish (optional)

1. Mix the butter with the miso in a small bowl. Boil the corn cob for 5 minutes until the yellow colour brightens. Remove from the water and then char it on a gas hob or under a grill until pretty well-blackened. Use tongs to move it about and get it black all over.

2. Meanwhile, add a splash of neutral oil to a saucepan and cook the spring onion whites until beginning to soften and char. Add the orzo to the pan then add a couple of cupfuls of water (I used about 600ml from the pot the corn cob boiled in), season, and stir. Slice the corn off its cob and add the kernel-less cob to the pot with the orzo. Keep an eye on the pot and add a bit more water if/when needed (this will depend on the size of your saucepan).

3. When the orzo is cooked, remove the cob with a pair of tongs and stir in most of the charred corn, and the miso butter until the whole thing comes together and looks creamy. Plate up, topping the orzo with any remaining bits of charred corn, the spring onion tops and the green chilli, as well as some toasted sesame seeds if you have them. Enjoy!

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