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Melissa, this is a thorough, well done and practical guide to nixtamalization. Thank you. I have been nixtamalizing dried corn for a couple years and continue to experiment. I can testify that the corn flavor radiates any dish when you take the time to nixtamalize at home. In addition to posole, tamales, and tortillas, I have branched out into encorporating nixtamal into less traditional dishes such as buttermilk cornbread - using 100% corn (50% nitxamal, 50% corn meal). No need for wheat flour, so gluten intolerant folks can enjoy it. There are so many varieties of corn available to try. Just to add a comment on posole from Masienda, Heirloom White Cacahuazintle Corn is their preferred variety for posole.
What a great idea to do cornbread with only corn, and half of it nixtamal for binding (and flavor too I’m sure).
Thanks for the tip regarding cacahuazintle.
(I just went down the language rabbit hole because the word is so similar to cacahuete, peanut in Spanish. Both must come from the Nahuatl word, cacahuatl for cocoa bean.)
Great article! Thank you also, kkdohrer, for your tip on cornbread. My daughter is gluten intolerant, so I would be very interested in a recipe for nixtamal/cornmeal cornbread.
Kathryn, I am still experimenting and adjusting my buttermilk cornbread recipe, but as good starting points look up Melissa Clark’s recipe in the New York Times (Brown Butter Skillet Cornbread Brown Butter Skillet Cornbread Recipe - NYT Cooking (nytimes.com) and the Buttermilk Corn Bread recipe by Susan Spicer from the December 2000 Food & Wine Magazine. My alterations are to substitute freshly milled “regular” dried corn for the wheat flour component and use the ground nixtamal in place of the cornmeal. I grind the nixtamalized corn in a food processor. Per Melissa’s suggestion, be sure the limed corn has been cooked through. Add sufficient water when processing to get as fine a corn grind as possible. If the result is too wet, just let the water evaporate until you get the desired consistency. The grind of the processed nixtamal will not be as fine as that of the corn flour. But the differences in texture work well in the cornbread. The key to a good cornbread batter is to get the right viscosity – not too runny or too thick. As others have suggested, I let the corn flour-nixtamal-buttermilk mixture rest (autolyze) for 30 minutes or so before adding the remaining ingredients. I hope this works for you.
Thank you so much for posting this recipe! I have some blue corn I would love to try this with! Do you grind the nixtamalized corn while wet? If so, is the hydration low enough to make a fresh tortilla without having to dry the corn after the process?
If you plan to use a stone mill like a Mockmill, you need to fully dry the corn first.
I don’t have a dehydrator, so I use food processor or more recently, a Victoria grain mill (metal plates, hand crank).
When I use a food processor to grind the nixtamalized corn, I have to add a fair amount of water (to the already wet corn) to get decent fineness. The masa is then too wet for tortillas. So I just add to it a tbsp or two of store/breadtopia-bought masa harina (dry nixtamalized corn flour). Pretty simple and common procedure.
When I use the Victoria grain mill to grind the corn, I don’t have to add as much water for the process and the corn masa is more fine, and I actually need to add some water to it before forming the tortillas.
Hi Melissa,
I am using sprouted corn and I want to make a double batch of corn. Do I need to double the amount of lime? Making a large batch of tamales.
Thank you,
Kelly
Tamales 
!
Yes, the weight of the pickling lime/calcium hydroxide should be 1% the weight of the corn. So 1000g corn would need 10g cal. And more water too, but the instructions from Masienda don’t specify water amounts beyond “a couple of inches over the corn.”
Thank you!!!
This is an awesome article! I’m just now learning about nixtamalized corn and I found this VERY informative. I have a question however! After I’ve nixtamalized the field corn I have in food storage, I need to dehydrate it in order to run it through my Magic Mill stone grinder, as I don’t have a wet grinder. At what temperature and for how long should I dehydrate it? What am I looking for it to look like after dehydrating it in order to make my own masa with it for tortillas, tamales, etc.? Thank you so much for this informative article!
I’m not very knowledgeable about dehydrating the corn once it’s been nixtamalized. There’s some info in these threads that you might find helpful. @DennisM has done a lot with corn.
My oven has a dehydrate function. At what temperature would you suggest drying nixtamalized corn before grinding on the MockMill? My understanding is stone milling gives the best texture to the masa.
This article says to dehydrate at 125F. I thought the corn flavor was stronger when I ground the nixtamal wet, but the tortilla texture was much smoother with stone milling dried nixtamal. It’s worth trying both to see which you prefer.
I nixtamalized corn, leaving it to sit overnight. I have rinsed it and now have all this corn, ready to be cooked into a stew (no plans to dry or mill it). The trouble is, all recipes I see for pozole call for canned hominy which is already cooked. Mine has been through half the process but is not cooked and ready to eat. Maybe I need to improve my search techniques to find what I’m looking for. Does anyone have any ideas for stew recipes that call for what I’m calling uncooked hominy? Or, do I need to cook what I have before adding it to a recipe, and if so, how? Either way, preference given to ideas using a pressure cooker. Thanks!
I make posole a lot! Not exactly from a recipe – though my original framework was this one: Party Posole Rojo Recipe | Bon Appétit
I’ve used pork, leftover turkey after Thanksgiving, and more recently did a vegetarian posole with black beans and blue corn.
As you noted, the nixtamalizing process gets the corn partly cooked. The good thing is you will be stewing the pork (or turkey, or beans if you make vegetarian) for a long time, so you can just add the corn earlier than the recipe states so it can simmer for a long time.
Here are some pics of my posole making. I recommend toasting whole cumin seeds in a pan and then grinding them yourself. Also using guajillo peppers as well as ancho.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvntpkGJxh0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17969167216880219/?hl=en
Thanks, Melissa. If I understand correctly, I can use any pozole recipe and just cook until the corn is soft enough to eat. (duh…seems pretty obvious now) Thanks for the links and tips on cumin and peppers.
You’re welcome! Yes, just cook as long as needed. It’s basically impossible to oversimmer the corn in my experience. (Pressure cooking can overdo things, though burst kernels are nice too.)
I was also confused the first time I did it, trying to imagine what two cans of hominy equated to in grams of dried corn to nixtamalize. I usually nixtamalize 500g corn and make what is most likely a corn-heavy posole but also probably a larger amount of posole overall. The winging it happens from the get-go 
I ended up taking a different approach to grinding the corn. I used the (metal) food grinder attachment for my stand mixer, using the fine disc. It’s important to feed the corn in a little a time so it doesn’t bind. Once all the corn was ground I put it in the food processor without any water. It then ground to a fine powder in a minute! (see pic) Then I can add just enough water to get the right texture for the masa. I put half the dry ground corn in a vacuum packed bag in the fridge and was able to make tortillas as I need them. Worked great although I don’t know how it would compare to dried and stone ground corn.
That looks like fine grind. Nice!
