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Which one of these corn varieties would make a good choice for grits to be cracked in my mock mill flour mill the store varieties are so bland and tasteless and is there any other preparation needed besides the cracking grinding before cooking thanks everyone I look forward to your replies
@ckn4lvn Here’s a discussion on getting grits from the Mockmill that has the technique info you’re looking for:
As for corn variety to try first, that’s tough. I don’t think you could go wrong with any of them for more potent delicious flavor than storebought. I’ll do some more reading and asking, and get back to you on texture though. I want to find out if the different starch/protein levels might lend one variety more than another to milling for grits.
You have to open up the mill reset the stones so that they are farther away apart. This is not in the manual but explained by Paul Lebeau on the Mockmill Facebook site. If you are not on Facebook I will find and copy and paste, maybe.
In my first attempt at grinding corn I must of had some grit, I made cornbread and the crunch made it inedible. I washed the corn, air dried it, but haven’t had the gumption to re-try it. I love tortillas though, I use fresh ground soft wheat for flour and have a small press for making corn which I use store bought masa in. I’ve never combined the two! I’ve since learned that store bought masa is actually quite bland, if not worse. Fresh ground is that way to go.
A corn variety you might try for grits is the white bolita (it has a relatively smaller endosperm – floury section).
Melissa-- we’ve been using your recipe for the sourdough tortillas with yellow dent corn and a 50/50 mix with wheat flour. We’d like to try making 100% corn tortillas using this recipe. Do you know if the nixtamalized corn can be milled in the Mockmill? It would seem to gum up the stones. Also, are there specific corn varieties you recommend for corn tortillas.
Regarding nixtamalization, is it OK to eat non-nixtamalized corn? I recall one of the articles from breadtopia mentioned that the process was originally created to reduce sickness from eating the corn.
Hi Jon,
You can mill nixtamalized corn if it’s dried to the point that a kernel shatters when whacked, or the weight of the corn is the same as before you wet it to begin nixtamalizing.
More about that here Corn Porridge and Rosemary Sourdough Bread - #43 by DennisM
The easier way to do this, which I may do this weekend actually, is to nixtamalize the corn and then after it’s drained, food-process it to a fine meal. Then I’ll add a little not-homemade masa harina/nixtamalized corn flour to the dough to firm it up for tortilla making.
Nixtamalizing makes the niacin/B3 in the corn available for absorption. If your diet were almost exclusively corn, it would be crucial to nixtamalize it in order to not develop a niacin deficiency disease called pellagra. It also makes the resulting cornmeal have a texture that binds vs crumbles when made into a dough.
Any of the corn varieties we carry would be delicious and doable for tortillas. My sense is that the two cónicos (red and blue) may be a little more challenging, whereas the bolita starch structure is described as capable of supporting even very large tortillas, and the olotillo is what the same corn that is used for the nixtamalized corn flour/masa harina. I was so intrigued by the flavor description of the mushito, that’s the one I may nixtamalize first.
Here’s the video series I’m following to do my nixtamalizing.
Thanks Melissa for the detailed response. The ‘easy way’ seems like a good option. I’ll be interested to hear how your experiment goes. BTW, we use your sourdough tortilla recipe just about every week with 50% yellow dent corn and 50% milled flour with great results.
That’s so cool to hear. I’m curious what wheat variety you like to use.
We’ve been having great results using Pima Club freshly milled
That’s a great wheat. I should try it in tortillas too, I’ve been using it for cookies and cakes.
Indeed I’ve had good success with Pima Club in pancakes as well.
How did you experiment with Nixtamlized corn in the food processor go?
Delicious and totally satisfied taste testers, but not as fine a grind as I’d like, so I’m trying again with a slightly longer boil. And looking forward to milling the (fingers crossed) dry nixtamalized corn.
I meant to add that pima club in pancakes is a neat idea. Thanks : -)
Maybe late to the game, but I managed a successful crop of Tennessee Red Dent corn 2 years ago. My old-school hand-crank Corona Grain Mill worked very well for grinding the dried kernels into grits. Took 2 passes, but it did well…they were delicious.
@Fermentada - I would like to use this recipe and make baked corn chips. Would you fry the tortillas according to the recipe and then cut in triangles, brush with oil and bake, or do you think it would work better to cut the triangles from the raw circles and bake those? Thanks!
I’m still at the “buy tortilla chips” stage of the game but I would love to use fresh-milled corn and good oils instead. I guess the best thing to do would be to fry up some tortillas and also work from dough triangles, then compare.