Ingredients
Seven things. One of them is foil. Don't make this complicated.
Instructions
- Shuck the corn. Pull off the husks and silks completely. Then pat the ears dry with a paper towel. Wet corn under foil steams instead of caramelizing, and steamed corn is what you get out of that sad pot of water you swore you weren't going to use this time.
- Tear the foil — one sheet per ear. Each sheet needs to be big enough to wrap the corn completely with enough overhang on top to fold the seam over twice. Heavy-duty foil is the move. If all you have is regular foil, double it up. We will get to why in a minute, but the short version is the butter melts and the butter wins.
- Build each pack. Place an ear on a sheet of foil. Top with 1 Tbsp butter. Sprinkle the salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder over the corn. Pro move: mash the butter and the seasonings together into a compound butter first, then smear it onto the corn. More even coverage, no chasing pepper into the corners of the foil. Either way works. The compound butter is the smug-about-it option.
- Wrap tightly. Roll the foil around the corn, twist the ends like a candy wrapper, then fold the top seam over twice. The corn should be fully sealed — you do not want butter escaping. This is a closed system. If it's leaking, it's not closed.
- Side one — about 20 minutes. Fire the grill to medium, 350-400°F. Lay the packs on the grates, close the lid, walk away. (Don't actually walk away. Cook other things. See the callout.) Twenty minutes, lid down.
- Flip. Side two — about 10 minutes. Lid back down. Total grill time is roughly 30 minutes. You'll know they're done when the kernels are tender and you can hear the butter actively sizzling inside the foil. If the foil is silent and cold to the touch, the grill isn't hot enough — check it.
- Rest 2-3 minutes, then unwrap CAREFULLY. The steam trapped in those packets is hot enough to scald. Open each pack with the seam facing AWAY from your face. Slide the corn onto a plate, then tip the foil and pour the pool of seasoned butter back over the corn. That butter is the recipe. Don't leave it in the foil. Serve immediately.
Read These Before You Ruin It
- Cook other things at the same time. If the grill is hot, you should be cooking three things on it, not one. Corn packs are a sealed unit — they don't care what's next to them. Burgers, sausages, peppers, wings (a different way to do those), whatever's in your fridge. The packs handle themselves. This is the entire pitch for cooking corn this way: it costs you essentially zero attention while you're cooking dinner.
- Heavy-duty foil or double up. Non-negotiable. Melted butter eats through a single layer of cheap foil somewhere around the halfway mark, and then your seasoning runs onto the grates, your corn dries out, and you spend the rest of dinner pretending it's fine. It is not fine. Heavy-duty foil, or two layers of regular. There is no third option.
- Open the packets away from your face. Steam from a foil packet at 400 degrees is a real burn. Slow open, seam pointed away, give it a second to vent. You only have to learn this lesson the painful way once, and the lesson is not worth the eyebrows.
- Pour the butter back on. Every pack has a pool of seasoned butter sitting in the bottom of the foil when you open it. That pool is not waste. That pool IS the recipe — it picked up the salt, the garlic, the onion, and the corn juice. Tip the foil, let the butter run back onto the corn, and then serve. If you throw out that foil with butter still in it, I cannot help you.