Adventures in Nixtamalization

[12540dumont]

The only thing that I have to add, is that if you are using a press, instead of centering the the ball on plastic, offset away from the hinge. The hinge side tends to press too thin. I always flatten the ball a little before putting another plastic circle on top and pressing. Not too hard....too thin = can't get it off the plastic.

Also, I don't add water before the second grinding. Grind twice before adding water. It's less messy. Dough should be nice and smooth...not crumbly!

I have had every color of corn tortilla in Mexico. I have also had corn tortilla made with wild greens added, and even spinach, and wheat.

[steev]

I want my tortilla with carne asada and salsa added.

[kevin8715]

Nov 2, 2014 21:03:56 GMT -5 steev said:

I want my tortilla with carne asada and salsa added.

Had that in tonight's dinner. Pretty good stuff along with grilled corn, grilled zucchini, etc.

[steev]

Went by Herrera's Mercado; he isn't there much, being busy with another branch he's opened (damn, he's a hard worker!); unfortunately, his son says they buy harina de masa.

[mickt]

Ive been making nixtamalized tortillas for a few years now using my cross of Roy Calais and Cascade Gem with a whole bunch of other random stuff thrown in, but only as the father. Here's what I can say.
Yellow is milder and makes a 'blander' tasting tortilla, which is better for stronger flavored food. The red cobs have very wonderful flavor but gets lost when you add a bunch of flavor to your beans/eggs/chicken/whatever. Also the red takes quite a bit longer to cook and soak before the pericarp comes off.
I have also tried Painted Mountain and did not like it. Turned into grey mush and every kernel finished cooking at different times. Did not turn into a very good product. This is why I am focusing away from the multi-colored "Indian" corns I have seen elsewhere. I really like this red and yellow segregation that I have going on. I have always wondered why they segregate and some yellow kernels dont show up in the red and vice versa.. if anyone has a good book that would explain that to me I would appreciate it.
Some things a have found:
1) Grind corn with hand grinder. I used a Cuisenart at first and the dough flakes apart worst.
2) Press tortilla by hand (like in the video you linked) rather than press. Try it!

[blueadzuki]

Quick question

If you are planning to use wood ashes to nixamaitze, does it matter what kind of wood the ashes come from? As my dad pointed out, our fires over this fall will be nearly all softwoods (hemlock and pine mostly) because that is what we have in the woodpile (and remember what I said about our local rules about taking down trees, it's not like I can go and cut an oak down) Are the ashes from that OK, or will I wind up poisoning myself with creosote? With the tiny amount of corn I'm going to have to work with, the "free" nature of wood ashes has its attractions, but if it's a matter of safety, I'd be just as happy biting the bullet and ordering a bag of pickling lime, even if I DO end up tossing 99% of it.

[DarJones]

Oak and hickory are good sources. Avoid all pine and related species.

[blueadzuki]

Got it, so I should buy the lime.

[catherinenm]

Nov 16, 2014 22:08:10 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

Quick question

If you are planning to use wood ashes to nixtamalize, does it matter what kind of wood the ashes come from? As my dad pointed out, our fires over this fall will be nearly all softwoods (hemlock and pine mostly) because that is what we have in the woodpile (and remember what I said about our local rules about taking down trees, it's not like I can go and cut an oak down) Are the ashes from that OK, or will I wind up poisoning myself with creosote? With the tiny amount of corn I'm going to have to work with, the "free" nature of wood ashes has its attractions, but if it's a matter of safety, I'd be just as happy biting the bullet and ordering a bag of pickling lime, even if I DO end up tossing 99% of it.

Yeah, sounds like your ashes would NOT be the best.

I have a recipe for using wood ashes from Hopi Cookery, by Juanita Tiger Kavena, 1980. She specifies that Hopi cooks prefer the ashes from four-wing saltbush. I suspect the ancient puebloans in north-central New Mexico used the same cooking ashes, as four-wing saltbush is now a marker plant that helps archeologists locate early pueblo ruins. This is a brushy shrub without very many thick branches, so it wasn't burned for heat. It was strictly burned to collect the cooking ashes. Spanish colonists tended to settle in less arid locations, so they didn't have access to the FWSB so much. They would have burned pinon pine or juniper (actually preferred here, as they have such a perfume when burned, but no good for cooking ashes), cottonwood or aspen (unpleasant smoke fragrance, so I suspect the cooking ashes would have been avoided), or oak brush (large shrub/small tree, ashes good for leaching out lye, so probably also good for cooking).

Only two of my New Mexican cookbooks include instructions for nixtamalization. One specifies "hydrate lime," the other specifies "slaked powdered lime," but they are the same thing, the same pickling lime already referenced.

Nixtamal (Lime Hominy)
Many different varieties of white corn may be used in preparing nixtamal. Concho variety is the most commonly used, especially in preparing masa for tamales.
5 quarts dried white corn
15 quarts cold water
1 cup hydrate lime
Wash corn in cold water thoroughly, discarding all kernels that float to top. Place corn in a 5 gallon stainless steel or enamel kettle. Add water and lime. Bring to a full boil, continue boiling until hulls on kernels are loose. Stir occasionally. Boiling time about 1 hour. Remove from heat, run cold water over corn and wash, rubbing corn between palm of hands, until water comes out clear.
YIELD: 8 quarts nixtamal
NOTE: For making corn tortillas, measure 1 quart nixtamal before washing, rinse only once, drain thoroughly, and freeze.
from New Mexican Dishes, by Philomena Romero, 1970. Philomena's Restaurant was still going when I moved to Los Alamos in 1980--great location, great views, good solid food. Everyone in town had a copy of her cookbook!

Concho is a white flint corn, formerly common in the Espanola Valley of north-central New Mexico, and used for both posole/hominy and for chicos (roasted on the cob in the milk stage, then dried, then removed from the cob when dry--we like to cook it in bean dishes). It is now available from a farm in eastern Colorado, a few hundred miles northeast of Espanola.
www.farmdirectseed.com/product.asp?specific=2117

I thought the bit about only rinsing the nixtamal once before making tortillas was interesting.

Oh, if Joseph sees this, the Espanola Valley is about 5200-5500 ft above sea level, arid, zone 5-6, short season with cool nights all summer long. Avondale, CO, has a similar climate, but warmer nights in the summer. Just saying. :-)

Catherine

[blueadzuki]

Thanks, I keep that in mind for next year (I've had to table this years niximatizing plans. The same problem has come up with this as did with the chica morado plan; a lot of the dent corn I accumulated came from ornamental ears I got a the supermarket, so they're probably sprayed with preservatives that would make them unsafe for consuption. I'm not sure about the safety of small amounts of corn in the mix from the farmer's market (unlike the minature corn, I haven't found a worker there who knows if the stuff is sprayed.) It probably isn't bacause of the problem that would invalidate it in any case; a lot of the floury stuff is RIDDLED with black mold (when I buy them, the cobs are not only still wet, they are functionally rotted; try and pull of kernels and the cob itself comes apart in shreds.) So I'm waiting until I grow my own clean material before proceeding with consuption plans.
Oh and a few of them may be part concho as well (at least they resemble the concho relative corns Native Seeds offer.)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Catherine: What a great altitude! One of my favorite mixta squash came from a garden at about 6000 feet near Taos.

[oxbowfarm]

There should not be any more danger of creosote in conifer ash than in hardwood ash. Conifers do not produce more creosote than hardwoods. Creosote is a secondary byproduct of combustion, it would be produced in a fire burning starch logs or sugar in the right conditions. If you are burning and getting a lot of creosote it means you are not burning the fuel properly. Either the fire is inadequately oxygenated or the fire isn't hot enough. So the problem is either ventilation or wet fuel. When I was a kid in Colorado we burned Ponderosa and Pinyon pine and never ever had any creosote cause the wood was all bone dry.

Here in NY people have huge creosote problems and everybody burns deciduous hardwood. I've got several neighbors who climb up on their roofs several times a winter to clean their chimneys. When you buy fresh cut firewood in October, you're going to have all kinds of creosote issues.

I've been looking at some tables at hardwood vs softwood ashes and there doesn't appear to be much difference chemically. Hardwood ashes seem to have a higher mineral content, especially Calcium and Potassium than softwood, but the differences are very small. I would quite happily use conifer ash to nixtamalize corn. In fact I intend to. I just started burning wood for the winter and have constructed a screen riddle for sifting the ash. So the next batch of corn I do is going to be ash nixtamalized.

I cannot imagine the species of wood having any flavor effect on the corn, but different species seem to vary a bit in their mineral content. If your ashes contain anything but mineral salts and charcoal then something is wrong.

[DarJones]

I tried pine ashes once. That is why I use oak and hickory.

[jondear]

I wouldn't use any wood I wouldn't use for smoking meats. I avoid all conifers and anything in the birch family for my smoker. The softwoods have a turpine flavor and all the birches impart a bad flavor, possibly from the bark. Fruit and nut woods, hickory, mesquite, maple, beech and alder all work great. I usually aquire my smoking wood right from my woodpile. Seems logical they'd work good for other culinary purposes. Just my 2 ¢.

[steev]

On down the road, I guess I'll try a comparison of ashes, but I agree with oxbow that properly-burned wood should impart no peculiar character to its ash; the whole point of burning is that nothing but mineral should be left; hence, nothing resinous nor odoriferous. Therefore, no effect in nixtamalization, except that of the hydroxides, which have no species-specific character.

Clearly, if one uses incompletely burned wood, leaving bits of perhaps even charcoal, there may be issues of residual aromatic compounds.

While I agree entirely with posted opinions regarding smoking, I must point out that smoking is a process of driving aromatic compounds out of woods, without combusting them, which is why smoking is typically done at lower temperatures, specifically for the purpose of not only preserving food, but flavoring it, for which reason, one wants to avoid woods that make that food taste "icky". This is an entirely different process, both of processing food, and of burning wood. Burning is combustion; the destruction of organic/aromatic compounds by heat, the complete result of which is only mineral, having no character of any living species, aside from perhaps the balance of the particular elements the species in question tended to accumulate, or not. While I don't doubt that different woods produce ash of different pH, depending on the elements they accumulate which can be converted to hydroxides through combustion; I'm pretty sure that hydroxide is hydroxide, regardless of its provenance.