Corn silks can be notoriously tricky to lure out of the crevices between rows of kernels on a cob. Often, no matter how scrupulously you've desilked, you'll find a hidden silk while you're eating.

We take most of the silks off by hand, but it is the deeply hidden and slippery ones that give us the most trouble. There are special "corn de-silking brushes" on the market, with very soft, flexible bristles, but we find just about any vegetable brush does the trick.

Don't use a brush whose bristles are so hard and stiff that they tear open the kernels, but it is rare to have such a combination of stiff bristles and tender kernels that that might happen.

We sometimes find you have to change direction with the vegetable brush to snag the trickiest silks - going up and down the ears, sure, but also sometimes round and round. No matter how devious and embedded the silks, they can seldom resist the round-and-round maneuver.