I live in a country barren of corn tortillas. A possible sop for my craving: one of the Bayless books has a recipe for a large banana leaf-baked tamal, dough made from nixtamal.
I have New Mexican dried posole. Googling a few Mexican food sites has only confused me ... dried corn cooked/soaked in water with lime produces nixtamal. Pick off the husks and you have hominy. But I thought posole = hominy?
Is my posole basically dried corn, the type I can use to get from point A (massive corn dough cravings) to point B (nixtamal)?
This is one of the hardest concepts to get across to people who live North of the Border, especially to folks who live in the Southwestern United States.
The dried corn used to make *nixtamal* is called *maíz cacahuazintle*.
The *nixtamal*, prepared by soaking and boiling in water mixed with slaked lime, is ground and used to make *masa* (dough) for *tortillas*, *masa* for *tamales*, *masa* for *sopes*, for *huaraches*, etc.
*Pozole* is the soup/stew made with whole *nixtamal*. You must remove the husks (actually the skins of the individual corn kernels) in order to use the *nixtamal*. In the process of boiling the *maíz cacahuazintle*, the skins soften and slip off the kernel. After you boil and cool the corn, any remaining skins can be removed by gently rubbing the kernels between your hands.
What you have is a bag of *maíz cacahuazintle*, which you need to *niztamal*-ize in order to use it in *pozole*.
Canned hominy is simply *nixtamal*-ized corn. It's good for what it is, but it makes an inferior *pozole*. You're on the right track to make your own *nixtamal*.
¡Suerte y buen provecho!
Is the *nixtamal* ever dried and sold whole?
I have bought and used the Peruvian version, Mote pelado, 'peeled giant corn' (mote is the Andean term for hominy). The slaked lime stage has already been done, though it still needs a number of hours of cooking.
paulj
Can you tell us what you used Mote pelado for? I've added it to posole, but still have a lot left.
In Ecuadorian restaurants mote (hominy) is most often served as a starch side dish. They like their starches, so it is not uncommon to have potatoes, rice, and corn in one meal. Sauted with a bit of onion it goes well with fritada (carnitas).
It is also used in various soups, in the same spirt as posole. For example, it is the starch in mondongo, a cow foot soup finished with a touch of peanut butter.
paulj
Yep, in some supermarkets here in Guadalajara I've seen packages of *nixtamal* that look like that, although I've never used it. It's sold refrigerated. Is mote pelado sold refrigerated?
Thanks for the clarification, Cristina! I see a large tamale in my future.....
Still trying to figure out the difference between Hominy and Nixtamal. Hominy can be bought canned almost anywhere. I grew up in Southern California and we were able to go to the Carneceria and buy fresh Nextamal by the pound. Usually packaged in plastic bags.
When making posole, my Dad always used Nixtamal instead of canned Hominy as it was not pre cooked and MUCH firmer than hominy which would cook up in the posole unlike the Nixtamal. Therefor my opinion of Nixtamal is the treated corn but not pre cooked.
Using Hominy would end up more like grits in the Posole.
This all said, what is the difference in the Nixtamal that I am use to and that mentioned in this article? I have lived in Houston for 10+ years now and dearly miss not being able to find the Nixtamal I am use to using.
I haven't seen the Nextamal that you describe (fresh whole treated corn), but my guess it is the same thing as hominy. Except that hominy is rarely sold that fresh - it is nearly always sold canned.
If you are going to cook it a long time in the pork broth (with the head and all) I can understand preferring the fresh version. Canned should be added in the last hour. But if you are taking short cuts with the soup anyways (with chicken, tender pork cuts, Knorr/Maggi soup base), canned should be fine.
I see large #10 cans of hominy (estilo Mexicano) in the Mexican food aisle - so someone must be using them in large batches of posole and other stews.
Here the OP talked about a 'New Mexican dried posole', but didn't expand on what that was. Guesses ranged from 'maiz para posole' (i.e. just dry field corn) to a dried form of your fresh Nextamal.
Goya packages a dry 'hominy corn', which looks like cracked (large pieces) dried Nextamal. I found it cooks nicely on the 'long multigrain' setting on my InstantPot (1 hr soak, 1 hr pressure).
There isn't much of a connection between hominy and grits, except in some name confusion. On a homestead they might have treated their field corn and then ground it coarsely to make grits. But with a water driven stone mill, the corn doesn't need to be softened or hulled - just grind and sift. I'm pretty sure 'stone ground grits' are just that - no intermediate hominy/nextamal stage. And Quaker style grits are mechanically hulled and degerminated before grinding (so is Italain style polenta corn).
New Mexico dried posole is sometimes called dried hominy or Nixtamal sold in grocery stores and at roadside farms throughout the State. I have purchased it but I prefer to use the frozen as it cooks more quickly. Some places also sell chicos which are kernels of dried (sometimes roasted first corn).
New Mexico has a lot of its own food traditions.
I have a small bag of purple dried field corn, and some 'cal', and might one of these days try my hand at processing it.
Judging from the shape I'd say the corn is dent type, though I read in another thread that the Southwest red/purple corn might actually be an even softer 'flour corn'.
And sometimes one can get purple posole.
where did you get the purple dried field corn and purple posole? I'd love some. Is it different from the blue corn...I did buy some of that in New Mexico years ago?
You can actually order them online -- even from amazon. The last time I saw them myself was at a roadside stand.
In internet searches 'purple corn' often refers to a Peruvian variety, that's quite dark, and most often used for a corn drink or pudding. Blue corn tends to refer to the the SW varieties, though these can vary in color. Darkest may be the variety that the Hopi use for their thin flat bread (pika?).
What I just cooked up (without cal) looks like this Teasdale Maiz Morada, which it describes as being from southern Mexico.
http://shop.teasdalefoods.com/teasdal...
Given the multi-ethnic nature of the market were I bought it, that make sense.
I agree. And people plant stuff in northern NM that comes from Mexico or South America.
thanks to you both. I googled and found some photos of lots of colors on a single cob as well as deep, deep purple, and the blue and red I am familiar with from time in New Mexico. Amazing and beautiful! La Tienda, the importer of goods from Spain, also has some Peruvian and other non Spain products, including purple corn. I'm going to be looking for these! Corn is like squash and beans......so many colors, so many patterns/shapes.....so many uses. I love it.
http://www.ansonmills.com/grain_notes/13
Anson Mills has a good article about corn, the different kinds and uses.
regarding hominy it says:
'Fresh hominy can be used as is for stews (posole in Spanish), or it can be ground, still wet, to masa or chopped into fresh hominy grits (an extinct foodway). Or it can be dried to make whole hominy (also known as posole or hominy). Dried hominy can then be milled to grits or cornmeal (both are extinct in the United States), or to flour (called “instant masa”).'
The use of hominy to make grits is described as an 'extinct foodway' - it used to be done, probably on a small scale, but is no longer common.
as I noted before, the Anson site gives recipes for making nixtamal with their dried corn product (needs to be cooked with culinary lime) and then using it for tortillas or Posole. It's the nixtamal that Rick Bayless talks about in his cookbooks and many others, of course, reference this traditional way of treating dried field corn to make corn foods. Including tamales.
Reading that recipe turned me off the idea of nixtamalizing my own. I'm not interesting the prolonged handling of cal. Nor do I have an appropriate container. I'm soaking the corn without cal, and will cook it without treatment.
Canned hominy and the Goya cracked stuff are enough for my needs. And TortillaLand preformed tortillas if I want fresh baked ones.
See my post about the "hominy corn" from Anson mills in the canned hominy thread
http://www.chowhound.com/post/canned-...
Have to say thank you to all that responded here. 1st timer here and I'm impressed. :). I would love to find the frozen version of the Nixtamal as I have used it before and exactly like the fresh I'm use to. Having a New Mexico heritage, I just find it sad that having moved to Houston all that is available here is Tex Mex. Not that it's at all bad, but I want my special ingredients I'm use to. I grew up in Southern California, and there was actually a local New Mexican restaurant what really was awesome.
I read somewhere years ago that some (unspecified) local tortilla factories will sell the nixtamal they make. Never found one anywhere near Boston.
I just checked and there is also a recipe for making nixtamal for use in tortillas in the Hot Bread Kitchen cookbook. The headnote says that "many tortillerias, including Hot Bread Kitchen, will sell you fresh masa." Their bakery is in East Harlem and their online store sells dried corn, lime, tortilla press, etc.
Looking for a place to park a URL... If someone knows of a better location for the following, please let me know.
Very detailed article on nixtamalization:
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/scie...
When I accessed this, it was not behind a paywall.
However, I just noticed that it mentions Tortilleria Nixtamal as selling masa, at least to restaurants; based on their website, I think that is no longer true - only tortillas seem to be listed as products. The article is dated 2016, so there may have been other changes as well.
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