Favorite corn for cornmeal?

This year I grew Cascade Ruby-Gold and it's so beautiful, I can't wait to mill it. I'd love to branch out and try some new varieties next year. Any favorites? Bonus points for beautiful colors!

Anna, welcome to the forum.

That is a beautiful corn variety.

I have read that for the best cornmeal you'll want to find a variety of field corn for cornmeal. Most field corn includes flint corn, dent corn, and flour corn.

We once visited a Mill in Indiana that had all colors of cornmeal.  We bought some blue though I did not car for blue cornbread.

Funny how color influences what I like to est.

If making mush, the Ruby-Gold you grew is my favorite. For baking I really like Magic Manna, but whenever I grow that one I end up with huge crop losses due to mold and pests. I'm trying a few different flour corn varieties next year, including some Lofthouse varieties, to try and breed better resistance into my crop.

Send me some of that beautiful corn!  Yikes, that is some fantastic stuff.

Really, though, when talking about corn and things made from it I have my two favorites, and both of them involve the nixtamalization of the corn.  This is a process done by the southwest Indians to make the corn more nutritious.  Basically they used lye to boil the corn for 10 minutes than let it cool over night.  It doesn't take much lye, (the best is derived from hardwood ashes,) to get the job done.  What the lye does is it breaks down the hard coating on the flint corn, (or all corn,) known as the pericarp.  This is then thoroughly rinsed off and now you have the corn ready to use.  The nixtamalization process renders the niacin in the corn more available by or to your gut biome so the corn nutrients can be absorbed.  Once this process is complete then the corn can be ground to make two things that I really favor as winter-time comfort foods :  Pozole, (pronounced po, as in go, -so, as in so, -le, as in let: po-zo-le,) and Atole, (A, as in ah, to-, as in go, -le as in let: A-to-le.)  Pozole is also known as hominy.  Dried hominy is ground into grits, however, pozole is used to make a wonderful stew.  Great winter comfort food.  There are tons of recipes online so pick the one you want.  This very same nixtamal is very finely ground to make corn tortillas, (this will not work with regularly ground corn meal, so don't even think of trying it,) corn chips, and my favorite Atole.  Atole, simply put is a gruel about the consistency of a stew broth.  Kind of thin and not too thick, so it is a drink; a great winter-time comfort drink.  Not too many recipes online for this one that are like mine, but you can still pick and choose.

We grow painted mountain. I suppose I could separate out the colors to get different colored flour but I don't so the flour ends up a purplely-bluish-gray color and it's delicious!

We've grown Cascade Ruby Gold, it does well in the Pacific Northwest and is beautiful. It is great for tortillas and polenta, but as a flint corn it is more difficult to grind on our bicycle grain mill. Slower! For cornmeal and growing we've had the best results with Nothstine Dent, a softer, yellow dent corn which grinds easily and is very tasty. Also very early and productive in our garden.
But there are so many varieties to try... we've also grown orange-red dent corn, (Victory Seeds) and it is very tasty, sweet, but was less productive. I'd like to try some blue/black flour or dent corns, and that beautiful lavender Mandan flour corn.

Living in Finland, between climate and lack of greenhouse I lack the ability to grow corn myself at this time. I am sure that I am not the only person who would be interested in Permies that either grow or know someone who does grow these varieties mentioned either ground or whole. Of course I would prefer to buy local.

"Living in Finland, between climate and lack of greenhouse I lack the ability to grow corn myself at this time."

Why not grow rye? We also grow rye and it is far more adapted to our wet northern climate than most varieties of corn are. Rye makes wonderful tasting bread, you must have plenty of rye breads in Finland! It also is easy to grind on our grain mill. Rye roots are very good for soil too, and it provides lots of straw as well as grain.

Check out http://theryebaker.com for wonderful rye bread recipes.

Maggie Salomonsson wrote:Living in Finland, between climate and lack of greenhouse I lack the ability to grow corn myself at this time. I am sure that I am not the only person who would be interested in Permies that either grow or know someone who does grow these varieties mentioned either ground or whole. Of course I would prefer to buy local.

If you can get some, you might want to try growing Painted Mountain corn. We aren't as cold as Finland but we can plant it in the ground when it's still frosty and cold and it sprouts right up.

Or I've had success with starting sweet corn inside and transplanting once the soil warms up. I collect toilet paper tubes and pack them with potting soil and start one corn in each tube. The tubes are narrow and deep (leave both ends open) so the roots grow nicely and the tube just rots away once it's in the ground.

Can you use popcorn seed for making cornmeal?

I 2nd (3rd?) The vote for painted mountain! I'm up at the top of Washington state, nestled close to the mountains and so far painted mountain is the only variety that reliably ripens for us, though it still needs to finish drying in the house near the stove, but that is an us problem since here things really start getting wet about a week before the corn is ready!  Even cascade and other varieties touted for their early season tend to be a couple weeks behind it.

It is an unusual ingredient to work with but I love it. Our homemade tortillas smell like popcorn which was a fun surprise and the polenta ends up pink :)  You will find that flour corn is a very different beast from Flint or dent. Flour corn grinds down mostly to a very fine powder with some coarser chunks made from the outer coat. Flint/dent looks more like the cornmeal you buy at the store with the tiny almost translucent shards. Both are great, just good in different ways.

Another fun thing about PM (I sounds like a real fanatic at this point, I blame my mostly failed attempt at other varieties this past summer) is that if you like to save seeds it comes with so much natural variety that over a couple years of careful seed choosing from your best plants you can really gear the corn to your particular locale. We've been saving seeds for 5 years and have already noticed a significant shift towards the characteristics that are important for us.

Aaaannnd of course, it is the prettiest thing out there. Not only are the kernels every color/pattern known to corn, the cobs, husks and silks also show incredible variation which I get unreasonably excited about :D

Ember Corsman wrote:I 2nd (3rd?) The vote for painted mountain! ...
Aaaannnd of course, it is the prettiest thing out there. Not only are the kernels every color/pattern known to corn, the cobs, husks and silks also show incredible variation which I get unreasonably excited about :D

My kids love husking the Painted Mountain corn in the fall. Every year, they groan when I call them out to our tiny cornfield but as soon as they open the first one, it sounds like Christmas! "Hey look what I got!" "Look at mine! I got a red one!" "Oh! Look! I have a blue and yellow one!"  And you can never predict what is going to look like before you open it, though the red husks are usually red kernels but not always.

We are also in western WA and we have to dry them indoors too but it looks so pretty that it's like a decoration.

I appreciate what has been shared. I'm inspired to start growing my own corn and grinding it to make lots of delicious foods.
I've grown sweet corn but that's about it so far.

If you're good with the taste of blue corn, then I'll add my vote to the list of recommendations for Painted Mountain. It is by far the prettiest corn I've ever grown! But I must be one of the few people who can taste the pigment that makes some kernels blue, and it is not a taste I enjoy. I went with Magic Manna because it promised most of the same traits as Painted Mountain, but without the blue.

(And with each ear being one solid color, even if you never know which color it will be until harvest. But it was the lack of blue that sold me on it.)

Lisa Racicot wrote:Can you use popcorn seed for making cornmeal?

Yup,  it's still corn.  I've seen whole cobs of corn, (I don't know what variety,) thrown into a fire pop, just like popcorn.  As I understand it, corn pops because of the moisture in the kernel and the hardness of the pericarp.  It eventually ruptures because of the steam build-up from the heat.  Going to the opposite direction, will popcorn make cornmeal?  I don't see why not.  If you have a mill, grind it and find out.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:If you're good with the taste of blue corn, then I'll add my vote to the list of recommendations for Painted Mountain. It is by far the prettiest corn I've ever grown! But I must be one of the few people who can taste the pigment that makes some kernels blue, and it is not a taste I enjoy. I went with Magic Manna because it promised most of the same traits as Painted Mountain, but without the blue.

(And with each ear being one solid color, even if you never know which color it will be until harvest. But it was the lack of blue that sold me on it.)

It's probably because I grew up eating blue corn that I love it so much.  I have not tried the PM corn yet so I cannot compare.  Maybe I should get some and find out.  The other thing I have never done is eat just plain old ground blue corn meal, so again, I don't have this as a reference point.  There are some yellow corn meals that have always tasted funky to me such that I don't buy or use them.  I grow and make my own blue corn nixtamal with hydrated lime, aka pickling lime and have never used lye from wood ash, I just know about it.  I do know that if you harvest the blue corn just as it is turning blue you can eat it like corn on the cob or cut it off the cob to add as cut corn to other dishes.  This I have done as well.  The PM corn would probably work  this way too, I mean harvested early and cut off the cob or eaten as corn on the cob.

Ember Corsman wrote:I 2nd (3rd?) The vote for painted mountain! I'm up at the top of Washington state, nestled close to the mountains and so far painted mountain is the only variety that reliably ripens for us, though it still needs to finish drying in the house near the stove, but that is an us problem since here things really start getting wet about a week before the corn is ready!  Even cascade and other varieties touted for their early season tend to be a couple weeks behind it.

It is an unusual ingredient to work with but I love it. Our homemade tortillas smell like popcorn which was a fun surprise and the polenta ends up pink :)  You will find that flour corn is a very different beast from Flint or dent. Flour corn grinds down mostly to a very fine powder with some coarser chunks made from the outer coat. Flint/dent looks more like the cornmeal you buy at the store with the tiny almost translucent shards. Both are great, just good in different ways.

Another fun thing about PM (I sounds like a real fanatic at this point, I blame my mostly failed attempt at other varieties this past summer) is that if you like to save seeds it comes with so much natural variety that over a couple years of careful seed choosing from your best plants you can really gear the corn to your particular locale. We've been saving seeds for 5 years and have already noticed a significant shift towards the characteristics that are important for us.

Aaaannnd of course, it is the prettiest thing out there. Not only are the kernels every color/pattern known to corn, the cobs, husks and silks also show incredible variation which I get unreasonably excited about :D

Another hurrah for Painted Mountain. Despite what everyone else says, I do not find the ground flour/meal blue but rather white.  And the smell and taste are definitely sweeter than any other organically grown corn I've ground to use.  I've also grown it for years at a high elevation in upstate NY where nights are always cool and the ground stays wet but get near 100 % germination. I have never been able to get even Golden Bantam sweet corn to mature to eating size here.  Of course, I select seed for short season to maturity and dry down, even though some picks up mold when fall rains come or sprouts on the ear if it dried already and I didn't harvest fast enough.   Hands down, the best corn for grinding IMHO.