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Nixtamalised Masa

Dried corn simmered with a little lime, steeped overnight and ground wet, which is what turns hard grain into a dough that holds together.

Vegan.

Ingredients

Method

  1. THE CAL IS WHAT MAKES IT MASA AND NOT JUST BOILED CORN. Calcium hydroxide is an alkali, and in hot water it dissolves the tough outer skin of each grain and goes to work on the starch inside. Corn simmered in plain water softens and stays corn: ground up it is a wet mash that falls apart in the hand and will not hold the shape of a tortilla for a second. The same corn simmered with one per cent of its weight in cal grinds into a dough you can press flat and lift in one piece. Every other step here is in service of that one.
  2. TEN GRAMS TO A KILO, AND IT IS WORTH WEIGHING. Cal is cheap and the temptation is to be generous. Too little and the skins cling on and the dough stays gritty; too much and the corn goes slippery and yellow and tastes faintly of soap, which no amount of rinsing afterwards takes out. A kitchen scale that reads to the gram settles it.
  3. IT IS SIMMERED BRIEFLY AND THEN LEFT ALONE OVERNIGHT. The fifteen minutes on the heat does very little by itself; the long steep off the heat is where the grain softens all the way to the middle. Boiled hard for an hour instead, the outside turns to paste while the centre is still chalky, and that chalky centre shows up as grit in the finished dough.
  4. THE RINSING IS DONE UNTIL THE WATER RUNS CLEAR, and this takes longer than seems reasonable. The steeping liquid is strongly alkaline and carries the loosened skins with it. Rubbed under running water by the handful, the skins come away and the water goes from cloudy yellow to clean. Stopped early, the alkali stays in and the dough tastes of it.
  5. IT IS GROUND WET AND USED THE SAME DAY. Masa is not a flour; it is a wet dough of about the consistency of putty, and it stiffens and sours within a day or two in the fridge. A food processor will do it in batches with a splash of the rinsing water; it will not be as fine as a stone mill and the tortillas will show it at the edges, which is a fair trade for not owning a mill.
  6. The corn tipped into a large pan, covered with the 3 litres of water, and any grains that float skimmed off and discarded.
  7. THE CAL WEIGHED -- 10 g -- stirred into a mugful of cold water until it is a thin milk, then poured into the pan and stirred through.
  8. Brought to the boil and simmered 15 MINUTES, uncovered, stirred once or twice. The water will turn deep yellow.
  9. The pan taken off the heat, covered, and left to stand 8 to 14 HOURS, overnight.
  10. A grain pinched between finger and thumb to test: the skin should slip off and the inside should be soft to the centre with no chalky core. If there is one, another hour of steeping.
  11. Drained in a colander and RINSED under running water, rubbing handfuls between the palms, until the skins have gone and the water runs CLEAR. Four or five changes.
  12. Ground wet, in batches, with a tablespoon or two of water per batch, to a stiff, smooth, slightly tacky dough.
  13. KNEADED briefly in the bowl and tested: a ball pressed flat between two sheets of plastic should hold its edge without cracking. If it cracks, a teaspoon more water and knead again.
  14. Covered with a damp cloth. Used the same day; it stiffens and sours after that.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes