Nixtamalization: Where Corn Meets Traditional Sciences to Maximize Nutrition and Taste
Recently, I put last year’s Cherokee heirloom seeds to traditional work, making fresh tortillas - and it only takes a year to do! The vast majority is passive time, waiting for the corn to dry. Read more to learn about a traditional process our ancestors used to improve nutrition and flavor while decreasing malnutrition diseases.
In 2023, I grew Cherokee Colored Flour Corn (along with Trail of Tears beans and other Cherokee heirloom seeds). I let mine hang from their harvest in September last year to June this year, when I was ready to process. Read more here about Three Sisters gardening, the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank, and techniques to improve your corn production and ensure you maintain genetic integrity.
Can’t I just eat the corn like normal?
Corn comes in different varieties. We are all familiar with sweet corn, which is what we find in grocery stores and farmers markets. Sweet corn is eaten straight off the cob off in its early or “milk” stage, when it is still tender and juicy. This stage is identified by the release of a milky substance from the kernel when pressed. Standard sweet corn originated from genetic mutations that prevent the conversion of sugars into starch.
However, flour and dent corn varieties, like those provided by the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank, need dried and processed to get the most flavor, nutrition, and use out of them. This year, the Seed Bank offered Colored Flour, Yellow Flour, White Flour, and White Eagle corn varieties. Cherokee White Eagle is a dent corn variety.
These varieties are left on the stalk to dry, past the “milk” stage for the corn, hung to dry, and then processed using nixtamalization.
“Cherokees used an important and scientifically advanced traditional technique called nixtamalization to make corn more palatable and nutritious.”
What is nixtamalization?
Nixtamalization is an ancient process that involves a steeping and cooking grains in an alkalized solution (i.e., cooking in lime), followed by grinding of the resulting nixtamal. This dissolves the hard outer kernel coating, allowing vitamins and minerals to be more bioavailable and digestible. Toxins (mycotoxins from molds) are also removed with this process, though cooking at high temperatures can accomplish this as well. The process was developed in Mesoamerica, possibly as far back as 1200-1500 BCE, and practiced by numerous corn growing cultures, including the Cherokee. There is evidence of nixtamalization use in ancient Cahokia (near present day St Louis, Missouri) around 1050 CE.
The result of the process is a larger, more nutritious, and tastier kernel called hominy, which can be added whole to soups like pozole, ground into grits or cornmeal, or ground fine into a masa for tortillas and tamales. The process also makes the resulting masa bind better together than corn that is simply ground, which tends to crumble when pressed.
Our ancestors would use nixtamalization to prevent malnutrition illnesses like pellagra, caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin (vitamin B3). For diets heavily reliant on corn, maximizing nutrition was essential to keep our culture healthy and thriving. In the varied diets many of us have today, pellagra is not a major concern. However, we can still learn and pass on this important cultural knowledge, uphold food sovereignty, practice traditional science, and make TASTY food.
How do you do it?
Anyone can do it! All it takes is a little time and lime (pickling lime, that is). Here’s how you can try out this ancient simple but scientific technique. You’ll need dry corn kernels (flour, dent, or flint variety), an alkalinized solution (like pickling lime or wood ash traditionally), a large pot, heat source, colander, and time.
Start with dried whole corn kernels (500 grams or 3 cups).
Make an alkaline solution and add the corn. Add 5 grams pickling lime (cal or calcium hydroxide) to ~ 2.5 quarts of water. You want about 1% of the corn’s weight in pickling lime. If you use too much cal, you could turn blue corn green (chemistry fun!). Alternatively, you can use wood ash. Add the corn. The water should be a couple of inches higher than the level of the corn.
Heat the mixture. Cover and bring to a boil, then let simmer for 30-60 min. Check a kernel at 30 min by cutting into it. It’s ready for the next stage when it looks about half cooked but with a white, chalky center. If not yet ready, keep simmering until it is ready. Once ready, turn off the heat.
Let it rest overnight. If the corn soaked up a lot of water from the heating, poor in enough water to cover the corn by about 1/2 inch. Cover and soak corn kernels in the solution overnight for 8-12 hours at room temperature. After this, it will look like corn and sludge from the outer coating (pericarp).
Rub, strain, and rinse. In the pot, gently rub off most of the outer coating, taking about 5 min to grab handfuls gently and let it fall through your hands. Pour off the liquid, reserving the corn (now called nixtamal). Note: if you’re making masa dough, save about a cup of the sludgy water. Set the corn in a colander and rinse well.
If you stop here, you have hominy, which can be eaten whole in pozole or fried. Fried hominy is a tasty Cherokee dish. You can also dry and grind it into grits. If you want tortillas, you’ll need to grind it finer.
Grind nixtamal into masa. You can use a mortar and pestle, food processor, or a corn grinder.
Use masa to make tortillas.
Check out how pretty and vibrant the nixtamalized corn is compared to its previous state!
Here’s a fun clip of Chef Gordon Ramsay making hominy with one of our Eastern Band sisters. This is made for entertainment value - I can’t imagine an expert chef like Gordon Ramsay not knowing what hominy is. But it is entertaining and great to hear our Eastern dialect language on TV.
What do you do with your nixtamalized corn?
It takes time and effort, so you’ll want to get the most enjoyment out of your finished product as possible. I made homemade Colored Flour Corn tortillas with blackened fish tacos and Trail of Tears black bean salsa. It made the best tacos and huevos rancheros the next morning. I got about 10 tortillas out of it… not a huge return in quantity but they were of significant quality.
The Trail of Tears black beans also came from my garden. They dry in their pods on the vine and then are kept dry until it’s time to soak and cook them.
Let’s all be Cherokee scientists and protectors of our culture. Let us know if you try it out!
— Sabrina McKinney
