Adventures in Making Hominy

I made hominy for the first time this week. It's a really interesting process! Whether you make it from scratch or not, you can use hominy in butternut squash soup and traditional Mexican pork and bean chili (recipes at the bottom of this post).

Hominy made with corn and lime

Preparing hominy is a traditional Native American way increase the locked-up vitamins, minerals, and amino acids in corn. If you've had corn tortillas, you've had hominy (ground into flour and called masa harina, in Spanish), but I was curious to see what it was like to make it myself as a possible children's activity around Abenaki/Native American foodways.

To make hominy, you add an alkaline substance like lime (the mineral - not to be confused with the citrus!) or traditionally lye (from wood ash) to whole corn kernels. 

I used dent corn that I special ordered through City Market from Nitty Gritty Grain Company in Charlotte (the lime came from Aubuchon Hardware). Dent corn is named after the little indentation on each kernel of corn, and it has flinty sides and a soft and starchy core, which makes it ideal for hominy (you can read more about different varieties of corn here):

Whole dent corn

The lime is alkaline, so it acts as a softening agent on the corn, causing it to swell, split open, and shed its hull. The hominy has to be substantially rinsed after this process, because the lime itself is not meant to be consumed. You also wash away the hulls during rinsing. What is left over is sweet, nutty-tasting hominy that smells faintly of soft pretzels, because traditionally soft pretzels are given a dip in an alkaline solution as well, which is what makes them caramel-colored and chewy!

A short digression about alkalines and acids in cooking grains and beans: You may have seen recipes for baked beans that call for a tablespoon of baking soda in the soaking water for the beans - baking soda is alkaline as well, and has a similar softening effect. On the other hand, you would never add anything acidic to beans while they're cooking, because the acidity acts as a firming agent, and the last thing you want is hard beans!

But to return to the hominy, after you've soaked it in lime, cooked it and rinsed it, you end up with something that looks like this:

I won't gloss over the fact that it was a bit of an arduous and messy process, leaving a substantial amount glued to the bottom of the pot! It might be one of those things that takes practice. There are many instructions for making hominy on the web, but I used this recipe.

Although this particular activity might be too challenging to pull off with children, I was happy to have about 3 cups of hominy that I could use to make my all-time favorite butternut squash soup recipe, a family favorite.

And since you're not likely to go home and make hominy, we DO sell hominy from Allens at City Market, and they are an independent, family-owned business. You'll find it in Aisle 2 with the canned beans:

So the basic ingredients for the soup are a butternut squash, a red pepper, and a yellow onion:

Stir them in melted butter with tablespoon of chili powder until peppers and onions are softened:

Add water, salt, and a bay leaf, and simmer until squash is tender. Finish with a little cream (if you like), a can (or two!) of hominy, and some fresh cilantro.

Happy butternut squash soup season!

Butternut Squash and Hominy Soup

Melt butter in soup pot and add diced yellow onion, garlic, and red bell pepper. Meanwhile, peel and cube butternut squash (if your squash is big, you may want to use only the top portion and reserve the bottom portion for baking in the oven for simple squash puree - remove seeds before or after baking).

Add butternut squash and chili powder and continue cooking until onion and pepper are softened. Add water to cover, salt to taste, and a bay leaf, and simmer, slightly covered, until squash is tender.

Leave soup chunky or blend (my family likes soup blended). Add hominy, rinsed and drained, and heavy cream and heat gently until warm. Finish with fresh cilantro.

and a recipe for

Pork Chili with Beans and Hominy

Click here to go to a traditional Mexican recipe at Food & Wine magazine..