Posole - The fun way

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>>8349804
Not bad son

Like the good ill blind try

Srry you haven't had anyone to run this by you step by step with all those do's and don'ts

I've only ever had canned hominy. I'm watching this thread.

>>8349804
>wood ash and running it through a sieve

So essentially just sifting it to eliminate the pieces of charcoal? Also, does the wood ash, corn water mixture sit over low heat or get heated at all? How long does the corn need to sit in the mixture?

I use a lot of masa, so I'm interested in the process. Keep updating.

>>8349804
I forgot to ask, can the finished product be ground and used as masa?

>>8349804
The stuff I've seen to nixtamalize corn at home on the internet simmers the corn with calcium hydroxide (cal mexicana). Seems like yours is quite different.

>>8349861
>Seems like yours is quite different.

not really. OP is making his own alkali from the wood ash instead of using commercially prepared calcium hydroxide. It's just and old-fashioned version of the same process.

>>8349825
Yes, I bring it to a boil, then turn it to a simmer. That's the 3-5 hour stage There are a lot of ways to make hominy, and you don't need to use wood ash. You can use slack lime or even pure sodium hydroxide, which is often sold as drain cleaner. Using sodium hydroxide is supposed to be much faster for the cooking stage (I've never done it,) but you have to soak it and rinse it like crazy to get the NaOH out of it.

And yes, I'm just getting rid of the charcoal and any other debris. Very small pieces of charcoal still make it through, but the stuff is harmless and most of that gets rinsed away anyway.

>>8349831
Yes, it can. You might need to dry it first, depending on your mill, and some kinds of corn lend themselves to being turned into masa better than others. My corn, the last time I tried, made a fairly course masa that led to a requirement of very thick corn tortillas. They were very tasty, but it was hard to work with. It's not a stable cultivar yet though, so that may change. My understanding is that dent genetics are dominant over flint, and flour are dominant over dent, so I may have a decent masa corn yet.

>>8349861
Calcium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide can also be used for this. Wood ash is what was used to make potassium hydroxide in days past. There is more than one way to skin a cat, but it's a good idea to have a sharp object at hand if you're going to do it, or, in this case, a substance with a high PH, which wood ash gives you, but to a lesser degree than things like calcium or sodium hydroxide.

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Here, the hulls are mostly off. For posole, this is just fine, but some like to wait until the endosperms start popping out of the kernels. I'm going to let it go a little longer.

OP u da real mvp

>>8349804
I hope you give us your posole recipe, or better yet, show pics when you make it. Anyone that nixtimalizes their own corn for it has to have a superior recipe.

>>8350432
Seconding this. OP, teach us ALL of your ways.

>>8349804
Some interesting stuff OP. I'll be monitoring this thread.

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>>8350432
I'm using pulled pork for the meat, which is less traditional. But I have a giant smoker, and pulled pork is good, so that's what I'm using.

Pic 1: Curse yourself for not stirring often enough when you see that. It's a rubbery mixture of ash and burnt hominy. It doesn't ruin the rest of the hominy, but it really, really sucks to clean up.

Pic 2: The hominy all washed. I started by dumping it into colanders and hosing it off. Then I bring it all in, clean out the pot that I made it in, and dump it into the pot. I add water to the pot and dump small amounts of hominy out into a colander and rinse the hell out of it. If you're using ash, there is a chance that it is gritty, so it is good to make sure you have it washed very well.

Pic 3: This isn't all of the ingredients, yet, but that's home grown garlic that I later put through a press, some roasted and chopped green chile from a local farm (my own is a wee bit too hot for a hunting trip in a next morning is going to suck kind of way), the hominy, and a 7 1/2lb (uncooked) pork butt, pulled. I prefer to use beef or chicken broth, but if you don't have any, bullion cubes (a shitload of them for a pot that size) works well. You fill it with liquid to preference, and I prefer it with just enough so that I can stir it. I still need to go get 4 or 5 large onions, dice them and throw them in, but I don't have them on hand right now.

Pic 4: All mixed (except for the onion,) but still cold. I'm going to let it simmer for several hours. I'll leave some out for dinner, and take some to my mom and niece, then probably can the rest.

>>8350557
That is awesome. I want to try using smoked pork sometime, too. Still unsure about nixtamalizing my own corn...

>>8350581
It's not difficult. You use equal volumes ash and corn, or maybe even a bit more ash if you have it on hand. It just requires a lot of rinsing, which is why I like to do very large batches. I used roughly one gallon of corn and one gallon of ash, and got over 2 gallons of hominy. That stuff really swells up.

That's actually corn from last year. This year's corn is more colorful. Next year's ought to be even brighter, because I'm selecting against white kernels.

>>8350606
If one wasn't /out/doorsman enough to grow their corn, what kind of corn would they need to look for in stores?

>>8350678
Anything that isn't sweet corn. If you wanted to go to a feed store and get a 50lb sack of whole corn, that would work. You can also order different kinds of corn for human consumption. You want either flint corn or dent corn. Corn sold as flour corn will work too. I expect popcorn would work, but I've never tried that.

FYI, sweet corn is picked before it is mature. When it is mature, the kernels are small and shriveled.

>>8350696
I can remember that. Thank you.