4 Different Types of Corn on the Cob

Learn about the different types of corn on the cob that you could find at a grocery store and/or farmer's market.

A collage of white sweet corn, yellow sweet corn, bi-color sweet corn, and wild violet sweet corn.

You may think that there is only the one time of sweet corn on the cob. Whether you call it bi-color, peaches & cream, or just yellow & white this is the most common corn to find in the store and at the majority of stores it's your only option.

But there are more options out there. Let's talk about corn that is all one color, your beloved bi-color and one that is bi-color but not the colors you are expecting!

Here are 4 different types of corn on the cob I have tried

Yellow
White
Bi-Color
Wild Violet

Bins of homegrown sweet corn on a table at the Toledo Farmer's Market.

How are They Different?

Whenever I make a comparison I like to have everything I am comparing available at once. Lucky for me there is a vendor at the farmer's market in Toledo, Ohio that sells bi-color, white, and yellow sweet corn. This a rare find and I was more than happy to get to taste test all this delicious corn at once.

Slightly opened corn on the cobs with yellow, white, and bi-color cobs.

Here are the observations I made:

Yellow corn has the strongest flavor. It's more corny! I find the same thing when comparing yellow popcorn to white. This is what I preferred.
White corn has a sweet flavor. It's what my wife liked best. The kernels were a little more tender and a little smaller in size.'
Bi-color corn was a little less sweet than the sweet, but with more flavor than the white. It falls right between the two as one would expect.

2 Wild Violet purple and white sweet corn on a white background.

Wild Violet Sweet Corn is a newer variety. It has both white and purple kernels, so it's a really pretty corn. This corn I have only found at Kroger stores and it comes already packaged with the husk removed. I would love to be able to dry it fresher as nothing beats that freshly picked flavor that I get from buying it from directly from the farmer.

Red Sweet Corn

In some seed catalogs I have seen what's called Double Red Sweet Corn, but I haven't ever tried it. I have read that corn will be sweet enough to eat (it's not like trying to eat field corn!) but it's not as sweet as the modern bi-color corn that we are all use to. The color is more of a dark red, almost purple.

Frozen Crazy Corn

Stahlbush Island Farms makes a bag of what they call Crazy Corn. You find it in the freezer section. It's a mix of white, yellow, and purple corn and is available at many different retailors. Sprouts is my go-to source.

I did an interview with them for my podcast that you can listen to by pushing the play button below. They are based out of Oregon and are actually on an island!