nixtamal corn technique

Greetings.  I'm here with an interest in the nixtamal treatment that turns corn into a soft, more nutritious kernel that can be made into a dough for tortillas and tamales.

I'll be happy if this post scares up anyone anywhere who's doing it, but my particular motive today is the type of corn I get here, in central Portugal.  It is, I believe, flint corn.

The first image (I think - first time here) is a kernel that was boiled for an hour yesterday in pretty strong lime solution, today maybe 20 hours later I broke it in half for the photo.

Second image is the dry corn.

This isn't the fancy flour corn handed down among Mayan farmers for tamales.  When I rinse it and rub it around, a little hull may come off, but what you see is pretty much what you get.  It's real yellow.  I think that's endosperm, couldn't say for sure.

Quality is more or less usable, but not excellent.  Tortillas are reasonably pliable, though far from the best I've made.  No inflation, ever.

I can likely get dent corn here, but it would be some trouble - I'd probably have to get a large quantity, and then hope I can use it before the weevils get into it.  Not sure it would make any difference?  I could probably grow some of my own corn, but I have the impression it's a heavy feeder for what you get.

I have a Victoria grain mill kind of thing to mash up the kernels with.

Thanks for reading!

Hi Donn, and welcome to permies! That looks like a flint corn selected for polenta qualities. How big are the ears? One well-regarded variety is Otto File, which is (like the name says) an eight row strain and traces its origins back to upstate New York and New England. It's also deep yellow like yours.

I make lots of nixtamal with a similar eight-row corn that is most likely descended from Painted Mountain. It is great for posole, but I still haven't quite got the tortilla process tuned to my satisfaction. What I am finding is that draining and spreading the kernels out to dry for a few hours before grinding helps a lot to make the masa less sticky. I use a Corona mill, which is pretty much identical to the Victoria brand, and a homemade wooden press.

Another thing that I find helps with tortilla quality is having a hot comal (griddle). My preferred cooking spot is directly on the steel plate on top of the RMH in my greenhouse. That gets up to 250-300 C and does a decent job, but my masa still doesn't show any signs of puffiness on baking the way my flour tortillas do.

I got this corn from a sack, but I expect everyone around here is growing the same thing, and the ears I've seen are something like 8 inches.  I believe the primary use is for broa, a type of traditional bread.  It's nice to be able to make corn tortillas here, because that's about the only way you're going to get them.

I sometimes have had a little trouble sticking, but I think probably when I add too much water.  Tonight I added just a little, and it was very easy to work with.

One possibility I need to explore is grinding it finer.

Corn is a heavy feeder, but is very easy to grow. Space the plants farther apart in hills rather than tightly in rows if poor soil is a problem.

Flints are hard, and were generally grown in the northern US and Canada, and were not used for tortillas or tamales. Try a southwest US or a Mexican variety. It should be possible to order seeds online in smaller quantities. Amazon has a lot of varieties.

I feel your pain. The corn I can get (here in Brazil) is for feeding your pigs/ducks. No idea what kind of corn it is. It requires lots and lots of washing.

I do boil it for a long while (maybe 2 hours?) and let it sit for a long while as well. I found that the Victoria mill was a pain, and I now use my Omega macerating juicer instead. I run it through at least twice before it's acceptable. If you're using the Victoria I think it's going to take various trips through the grinder.

And I've also never seen puffiness, but I do make a good amount and freeze part of the masa afterward, and it definitely seems easier to work with after freezing/thawing.

Nice tip on the freewing/thawing process, Tereza. Will try this. It could be that the flint types just don't have as much of the masa-friendly starch compared to flour varieties, but they are my favourite to grow and store the best in our conditions. I've noticed in past years that the white kānga māori made better tortillas, so I will try growing more of that this year on a far corner of the property.

I've gotten too lazy to make tortillas from our flint polenta corn. I just cook it into hominy and use it whole with beans and salsa and chopped greens to make a deconstructed bean tortilla. It tastes the same flavor-wise with lots less effort. BTW, I've also nixtamalized popcorn and sorghum as well as flour and dent corns and made decent tortillas from all of them. They're just different flavors and textures, but all quite tasty.

Larisa Walk wrote:I've gotten too lazy to make tortillas from our flint polenta corn. I just cook it into hominy and use it whole with beans and salsa and chopped greens to make a deconstructed bean tortilla. It tastes the same flavor-wise with lots less effort. BTW, I've also nixtamalized popcorn and sorghum as well as flour and dent corns and made decent tortillas from all of them. They're just different flavors and textures, but all quite tasty.

That's what we do too!
I love the texture of homemade hominy and as you say can add it to other things and have the flavor of tortillas without all the extra work.

I mill the corn in a kitchen blender and use the flour to make pancakes. Cornmeal, egg, oil, salt, fry on a frying pan. Different from tortillas or tamales, but good.

On cold days make cornmeal mush, boiling water, cornmeal, salt, then eat with cream and milk, sometimes honey or molasses, or pepper and hot red peppers. Both very quick and easy, and tastes good.

Both traditional uses for flint corn, though mine is mixed flint and dent more or less.

Thom Bri wrote:
Try a southwest US or a Mexican variety.

I'm back with the results of that - I grew some green Oaxacan, and made these tortillas.

I don't know if this variety is really the ultimate for masa, but believe it or not it's the only flour corn I could find among the EU online seed catalogues I looked at.  My yield was kind of marginal, the garden isn't very developed yet and things have to be able to tolerate calcareous clay and low phosphorus, but I got a few fairly healthy cobs.

Results were OK, not yet sure it's  worth it.  I think the masa was the best I've yet made.  The tortillas were pliable and tasted like the real thing  ... but still no inflation.  It's possible that the improvement is due in large part to three hours of boiling, and grinding as fine as I could, and the flatness is because there's too much roughage in there, the little brown tail that still sticks pretty hard to the kernel.  Have to experiment with locally available corn with the same conditions.

Donn Cave wrote:

Thom Bri wrote:
Try a southwest US or a Mexican variety.

I'm back with the results of that - I grew some green Oaxacan, and made these tortillas.


Results were OK, not yet sure it's  worth it.  I think the masa was the best I've yet made.

The ladies I saw making masa in Guatemala spend many hours a week grinding by hand, or, they bought commercially made masa if they had some money. I suspect it is a lot more difficult to make properly than we outsiders really understand.

That, and making the tortillas by hand was a real trick. I remember some young guys who told me they wouldn't marry certain girls because they were not good at making tortillas! 'Ella no puede tortillar bien.'

Regarding puffiness...I wonder if it's a texture thing? Commercial masa flour is like white flour in fineness and when I've made tortillas with that they get plenty poofy.

One of these days, when I'm in a tinkering mood, I'll take a batch of nixtamalised corn and put it into the dehydrator instead of just letting it air for the afternoon before putting it through the mill. Then when it's *really* dry I can grind it with the stone mill and (hopefully) get a truly fine flour. I'll report back on my findings.

That's my guess, the consistency has to be consistently fine.  When I boil for that long, I can get a generally fine, soft result, but there's a fraction that doesn't soften - mostly the tails, but could be also some meal from the center of the kernels.  Seems likely to me that when people make masa, the big masa harina industry but also the small businesses that make the masa I've occasionally been able to buy in the US, are getting those tails off somewhere in the process and what goes into the mill is just the edible part.  People rub the kernels some after the lime boil, which does get rid of some stuff, but for me not the tails.

I can't possibly recommend Jorge Gaviria's book Masa highly enough, so if you're interested in this topic, you'll find reading it well worth your time. Specifically, pp 126-131 are all about obtaining a puff in your tortilla. He calls out five factors: fine grind, pericarp presence (a light wash), moist masa, compaction/compression, and a hot (400F+) comal.

We often don't get a very good puff and it's clearly better if we run the masa through the Victoria a second (or third!) time, but we also like the more rustic grind and don't have all day to grind masa.