When I have space I grow hominy corn in my garden in the summer, and this is the first time I’ve harvested enough corn to actually have enough for dinner. This made me incredibly happy and yesterday I made the first batch of the year, the largest batch I’ve ever done.
Hominy is a somewhat rare variety of white (sometimes yellow, but usually white) flint corn. I bought a pound of seed corn several years ago at the Kalamazoo Living History Show – probably in 2007 – and have saved seed every fall since then. This past summer I had an 3′x6′ bed of corn this year, about 18 stalks producing one or two ears each. Here’s a pic of this year’s harvest after the critters got into it.
Mom and I shelled it off the cob. The easiest way to do this is to rub two ears together. The kernels just fall into the bowl. This is Mom shelling the corn.
We ended up with about four cups of corn kernels.
The skins of the corn need to be removed before eating and the traditional way to do this is with lye, an caustic chemical derived from wood ashes and rainwater. Its now commercially made and used as a really harsh drain opener that I’d rather not have in my food. Fortunately the skins can also be removed by boiling the corn with baking soda, and thats what I did. I used 2 1/2 cups of corn, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, and enough water to cover the corn in the pot.
I kept it on a low simmer and this is how it looked after an hour.
And after 4 hours, just before I took it off the stove. I added water as needed so the pot wouldn’t boil dry. The yellow color is from the baking soda. It can turn things yellow sometimes.
I could taste the baking soda so I rinsed it and put it back on the stove to simmer the baking soda flavor out.
From 2 1/2 cups of corn I started with, this is what it became:
Usually each kernel needs to be looked through to get the skins off but this was cooked long enough that they just rinsed off. Here’s the difference in the size of the kernels.
The final step is to fry the hominy with bacon grease and salt. You can use butter but bacon grease is more traditional in my family if we happen to have it.
It was seriously yummy last night for dinner with salmon patties and broccoli and we even have enough corn for dinner one more time this winter. Yay!
I really love preserving family traditions like this. Without these kinds of experiences the old techniques will die and I’m not willing to let that happen. Its a priviledge to be able to experiment with such things and I’m happy to be able to share them with you.
