Confetti Corn

Our easy Confetti Corn is a simple summer side dish of sautéed corn with sweet peppers, jalapeños, red onion, crispy bacon, and lots of fresh herbs. It's bright, flavorful, and simple enough for a weeknight dinner (ready in 30 minutes!). Leftovers are great in a salad or bowl, and it pairs well with summer staples like grilled chicken or steak!

Move over, grilled corn!

9 out of 10 times when we buy corn during the summer, we just give it the simple grill treatment. Don't get me wrong, simple grilled corn is delicious, but this summer, we're on a mission to find more diverse ways to use one of our favorite summer produce items.

This confetti corn is one of the best! We first learned about this recipe from the queen: Ina Garten. I'm not sure if she created the original recipe, but she definitely popularized it!

Hers is simple and fresh, and there are several other versions on the internet that lean more towards comfort food, with the addition of bacon and cream cheese. We opted for an in between, with lots of vegetables AND crispy bacon. It's still fresh and veg-forward, but the bacon fat gives it a slightly more indulgent feel.

It really does look like little vegetable confetti – there's red, orange, yellow, green AND purple. (Sorry, blue!) We load it up with 3 kinds of fresh herbs, including basil, parsley and chives, but for a simpler version, feel free to stick to just one or two.

Key Ingredients Needed for Confetti Corn

How to Make Confetti Corn

1. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, add the diced bacon. Once the fat starts to render and get foamy, reduce heat to medium-low and stir often. Cook until the bacon is very crispy and browned. Remove the bacon from the skillet with a slotted spoon and set aside. 
2. Return to medium heat. Add the onion, bell pepper and jalapeños and sauté for 4-5 minutes, until the onions start to soften.

3. Add in the corn, salt, pepper and apple cider vinegar and continue cooking for another 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all of the vegetables are tender. 
4. Add back in the cooked bacon as well as the parsley, chives and basil and stir well, cooking for an additional 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and serve warm. 

Top Tips from the CK Test Kitchen!

• Cook the bacon until it's very crispy. It will soften a bit once you add it back in to the vegetable mixture, so for textural purposes, you want it nice and crisp.
• When we first tested this recipe, we sopped up some of the bacon fat before cooking the vegetables, leaving just enough to coat a thin layer on the pan. While it still tasted good, it tasted better when we didn't remove any fat (no surprises there!). All of that to say – feel free to soak up some of the bacon grease with paper towel if you don't want the extra fat. Just keep in mind that the flavor won't be quite as rich.
• The jalapeños do not make this spicy really at all, especially since it's a fairly small quantity compared to everything else in the recipe. That said, if you're super sensitive to spice, you can leave them out.
• Feel free to use any color of bell pepper, including green and yellow. (We just wanted a nice rainbow of colors!)
• Dice everything pretty small, including the bacon. You want all of the vegetables to be around the same size so you get plenty of each ingredient in every bite!

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We can't wait for you to make this Confetti Corn in your own home! If you do, be sure to let us know! Leave a comment with a star rating below. You can also snap a photo and tag @crowded_kitchen on Instagram. We can't wait to see what you're cooking!

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