People have seen the light on eloté—the Mexican street corn that’s grilled, slathered in mayo and funky cotija cheese and finished with chile and lime. Esquites is almost the same dish, just the corn scraped off the cob. Here we add a few ingredients (beans, avocado, onion) to make it a more substantial side, but you can keep it pure and leave them out for your corn esquites salad.
Ollie’s Loaded Esquites Salad
by Chef Ollie Honderd
8-10 Servings as a side
Ingredients
- 6 ears corn, shucked
- 1 T neutral oil
- 1 small red onion, diced
- 1 jalapeno, serrano or other hot chile, minced
- 1 small clove garlic, grated or minced
- 1 15oz can black beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed
- 2 avocado, diced
- 1 small bunch cilantro, chopped
- 2 limes : juice + zest
- 2 t Tajin or chile powder
- ½ cup mayo
- 4 oz cotija or feta, grated or crumbled small
- Salt to taste
Preparation
- To cut corn off the cob, cut the stem (larger) tip off to create a flat surface—stand the corn upright with the flat surface securely on the board, carefully shave off a side of kernels, rotate and continue until done; finally, scrape the cobs with the back of the knife to harvest the “milk” and remaining goodness
- Heat a large saute pan over high until very hot, add the oil, quickly followed by the corn. Let the corn brown undisturbed on one side for 1 minute, until it picks up some color, toss to redistribute corn, and let it color for another minute. Remove from heat and tip corn into a large mixing bowl
- Add remaining ingredients to the bowl: onion, garlic, chile, mayo, cheese, lime, cilantro, avocado, beans and tajin and toss to combine
- Taste and adjust seasoning with more salt, lime or heat
***Tips***
- Tajin is a powdered condiment mix of salt, chile and lime; you can substitutes mix of chile powder and salt.