Sweet corn is a type of corn bred specifically to be eaten fresh, with kernels that taste sweet and tender rather than starchy. Unlike the field corn grown to feed livestock or make products like cornmeal and corn syrup, sweet corn is the kind you eat right off the cob at summer barbecues, boiled or grilled with butter melting down the sides.

The sweetness comes from a natural mutation that causes the kernels to store more sugar instead of converting it all to starch as they ripen. Farmers harvest sweet corn while it's still young and milky inside, before the kernels get tough and bland. If you've ever bitten into a raw kernel of sweet corn and tasted that burst of juice, you've experienced what makes it different from other corn varieties.

Sweet corn became popular in America during the 1800s, though Native Americans had been growing corn for thousands of years before that. Today it's a classic summer vegetable, picked at just the right moment because the natural sugars start converting to starch within hours after harvest. That's why corn from a local farm stand, picked that morning, tastes noticeably sweeter than corn that's been sitting in a store for days.