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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 30, 2017 12:13:46 GMT -5
I have a small amount of mostly white flour corn from this year and I love hominy. I'm very careful about nothing nasty going into my stove and have plenty of ash wood to burn. I can produce very clean, very pure ash ashes, even the kindling. For a first experiment if I start with just a pint of dry kernels, how much ash and water should I use? I use mostly ash these days myself, although I also burn some maple and locust and white pine from time to time in the mix. I've nixtamalized with straight softwood ashes as well, pure willow ash and pine ash. Any plant that will burn and produce ashes can be used to nixtamalize corn. But the ashes you are talking about are probably pretty similar to mine, so for my basic recipe I'd cut everything in half, which would be 3/8 of a cup. I don't own an 8th cup measure but I imagine that would be something like a heaping 1/3 cup or so of ashes. With the water I usually use double the volume of the corn plus a bit, so a quart of water plus a cup? With hominy it will not come out looking like canned hominy. What I do is I nixtamalize the same as I'd do for tortillas, and then rub and rinse off the pericarp then I boil/simmer the hominy in frest water till done to my liking. There are usually still almost all the germs still attached and lots of the cob attachments. Commercial canned hominy almost always is just the endosperm or just the endosperm and some germ pieces, so that will be a bit different. If you've every bought dried whole posole its much more like that than canned hominy. |
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Post by reed on Nov 30, 2017 15:07:50 GMT -5
Thanks, I think I'll give it a try.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 6, 2017 8:04:07 GMT -5
Just found this blog. Which appears to be a grad student who is obsessed with hominy. I haven't read the entirety of the blog yet, and she says a few things about different types of corn that I don't agree with entirely, but she definitely knows her nixtamalization. I don't know how I missed this before, I've googled hominy hundreds of times. What's up with that Google? |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 6, 2017 8:14:56 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Dec 6, 2017 20:24:53 GMT -5
Very informative; Oscar quality, fer shure.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Feb 2, 2018 18:38:44 GMT -5
I grow a little waxy corn. I don't mind it to eat but it is more chewy that what people are generally used to. I eat it as a sweet corn but most Asians prefer it grilled or BBQd. I might try it grilled this year. Didn't know which thread to resurrect about this. But i encountered a blog this last week. The guy considered "pod corn" a separate "type" of corn along with sweet, dent, popcorn, and i think flint ( can't remember the five he used. But i inquired as to why he didn't include waxy corn. His reply was odd. He said waxy corn did not have a difference in starch than sweet corn and said it is the same as sweet corn. I do not believe this to be true. But as i have never grown it i have no place to stand to argue with the man. Not that i want to argue, but i do think he's wrong unless i can learn otherwise. So, my question to you smart people, is waxy corn the same as sweet corn? I thought waxy types existed in types that were not sweet corn. |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 2, 2018 19:03:39 GMT -5
Waxy is very different from sweet corn. Waxy corn stores all its carbohydrate as amylopectin instead of regular starch. It is used in East Asia as a fresh vegetable at the sweetcorn stage I believe, but the genes that make sweetcorn sweet and waxy corn waxy are completely different, and do completely different things.
I'd say calling pod corn a separate type vs a type of popcorn is somewhat hard to support.
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Post by rowan on Feb 2, 2018 19:19:25 GMT -5
Correct, waxy (sticky) is not the same as sweet.
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Post by steev on Feb 2, 2018 20:47:10 GMT -5
"Waxyheart"; don't think that's likely to get one any sugar.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Feb 2, 2018 21:04:54 GMT -5
Waxy is very different from sweet corn. Waxy corn stores all its carbohydrate as amylopectin instead of regular starch. It is used in East Asia as a fresh vegetable at the sweetcorn stage I believe, but the genes that make sweetcorn sweet and waxy corn waxy are completely different, and do completely different things. I'd say calling pod corn a separate type vs a type of popcorn is somewhat hard to support. Correct, waxy (sticky) is not the same as sweet. Thanks. I knew i was correct from my reading. Yes i was very sure amylopectin was not the same as the starch in sweet corn. Or at least not in the same way as I've always read from people like rowan who have grown it that it is super chewy. haha, yes, oxbowfarm, you and i are of the same opinion, that it is dubious to call podcorn a "type" of corn and yet ironically/hypocritically call popcorn a separate type than flint corn and not a sub-type of flint corn AND completely ignore waxy corn at the same time. It is obvious this guy has either never grown waxy corn or that he really does not know what he is talking about despite calling himself an expert and flaunting his book about corn that he just published. Here is his blog post for those interested. I'm not trying to flame the guy, i find his blog pretty interesting, but i would be highly skeptic of any book he has written. seluseedsman.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/6-corn-types-whatttt/ |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 2, 2018 22:22:54 GMT -5
I've interacted with him before, he does grow a lot of corn. He's got this system where he grows lots of varieties in a greenhouse and hand pollinates. It seems counterintuitive to me, and I questioned how he was avoiding inbreeding, but he feels that his family has figured out a good system to avoid it. I personally like to grow large amts of corn outside so I can eat some of it. He's definitely wrong about waxy corn, but I probably believe some incorrect things about corn as well? Its a really pretty blog he's got there.
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Post by walt on Feb 3, 2018 14:18:47 GMT -5
My grad professor got his Ph.D on waxy corn.
Waxy gene can be put into any corn, but the old waxy strains from Asia are the only ones I know that are more than just dent corn made more balanced by adding the waxy gene. Waxy gene gives more lysine and tryptophan than the same breeding line without it.
When talking about popcorn, corn geneticists are talking about two seperate things.
First there is a gene for popcorn. But putting that gene into any old corn doesn't always give good popcorn. There are modifier genes for quality and flavor that are in the old popcorns. Transferring the popcorn gene to a new type of corn often just ruins that corn for other uses.
Pod corn is due to a single gene, and can be transferred to any corn. But there are old strains of pod corn that have their unique history of selection.
When talking about sweet, flour, dent, pop, pod, etc., one should not confuse the single gene with the whole genome that makes the variety what it is.
And thinking way back, the very first extra sweet corn offered commercially that I knew about combined amalose extender, waxy, and dull genes. AKA called ADX corn. It got great reviews but poor sales. Then se, sh2, brittle, and others were put on the market and ADX types vanished. Part of the reason was that bring in the 3 genes was more trouble than the single genes.
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