Nixatmal process

[Gagnrad]

This process is how maize ("Indian corn") used to be prepared for eating by people in the Americas pre-contact.

Basically, you treat the kernels of maize with an alkaline solution. It makes the maize easier to grind, but, more importantly, also improves its nutritional value, in particular making niacin (which is otherwise bound) available.

The Aztecs used lime for the purpose, various peoples in what's now the U.S. used ashes.

More on the process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

It's a kind of parallel to old methods of making porridge. In the old world, if you were wise, you soaked your oats in a slightly acid medium for day or two to deal with the phytates which otherwise bind up the minerals.

Poor whites in the American South, eating too much maize and not knowing how to prepare it properly, used to suffer from the deficiency disease pellagra:

In 1902, H. F. Harris, MD, an Atlanta physician, reported the first case of pellagra in the United States.[5] The patient was a poor Georgia farmer, who had always eaten a diet in which Indian corn was a staple and had had a recurrent, debilitating warm-weather sickness for nearly 15 years. ...

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410505_2

It's sometimes said that the irrational and violent characters in the novels of William Faulkner are displaying some of the symptoms of pellagra, but I don't know whether that's accurate.

It's interesting to find out about traditional foodways among native peoples at any rate. Here's someone who's actually had a go:

http://thecheffyboy.blogspot.com/2009/12/cooking-with-ashmaking-masa.html

 

[Toddy]

Interesting

Worth noting too that oats need to be preheated/ dried to loosen the outside layers of chaff that otherwise make them very much a lesser value of nutrition. The oats so treated are called groats.
Groats are what pinhead meal, brose meal and the like are made from.
Never heard of soaking them in acid anything before though. We just soak the meal overnight before we cook it for breakfast in the morning. If left too long somewhere slightly warm they start to ferment a bit and go slightly frothy. Still perfectly edible but not so good with milk.

cheers,
Toddy

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

I'd like to try some of the corn you can dry to preserve - especially the coloured ones!

I'm trying some Heritage beans this year (trail of tears type) that should prove interesting!

 

[santaman2000]

I've seen the Aztec and other cultures use of lye (When you say "lime" do you mean limestone or the citrus fruit?)to treat corn to process it. That's how hominy is made and grits are made from hominy. That's what makes me suspicious of the claim of the effect of the diet on poor white Southerners. Yes corn in some form was (and still is) the main staple in out diet but...and these are 2 very big buts...It was and is a mainstay of almost ALL Southerners diets; poor and affluent, black and white. And the biggest single part of that corn intake was and is from grits; which as aforesaid, comes from hominy which is properly processed with lye. That and/or cornbread made from ground cornmeal.

Modern Mexicans use "Kal" or "Cal" short for Calcium Hydroxide to process it to make masa harina.

 

[santaman2000]

I'd like to try some of the corn you can dry to preserve - especially the coloured ones!

I'm trying some Heritage beans this year (trail of tears type) that should prove interesting!

I've never seen anyone eat that yet. It's usually dried for seed corn although I suppose it might work for popcorn? All the original (pre-Columbian) corns were different colors from our modern white and yellow varieties. I've even been able to get some blue corn tortillas and corn chips; Some blue potatoes too for that matter and they were both quite good.

Good luck with the beans, let us know how they turn out.

 

[British Red]

I was thinking of grinding for cornmeal..and indeed using the Nixtamal process.

The lime mentioned is Quick Lime (Calcium Oxide) - made from burning limestone - caustic stuff!

Been cutting in 500 square feet of veg beds this last week (based on my own adaption of the Seymour system). The ground is so hard though I am getting vibration injuries from the rotovator (I think you guys call them tillers). We need rain badly. 500 square feet is a tiny proportion of what we need (and we have land for many times that) - but developing proper deep tilth beds from heavily compacted pasture land is crushingly hard work

I've been photgraphing the development of our garden but not put them up here - bit too "homestead" and not enough "Bushcraft" I thought!

I'll try to pop up some piccs of the "trail of tears" beans if I can though

 

[santaman2000]

Sounds similar to the Mexican "Kal."

The soil in here in most of the South is dry and hard too. Or at least it was until the flood waters started coming down the Mississippi River. Away from the river basin it's still dry. Good luck with the garden and the cornmeal. I'm looking forward to those pics.