Old Fashioned Hulled Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the corn
Shell the corn and place it in an iron kettle.
Cover the corn with cold water.
Add a bag containing the wood ashes and boil until the corn looks yellow and tastes strong of the alkali.
Remove the bag and boil the corn in the lye for over an hour.
Pour off the lye, add fresh water, and simmer until the corn swells.
Hull and cook
If hulls do not come off by stirring, rub them off with a towel.
Add more water and simmer for 3 to 4 hours, stirring often to prevent burning.
When the corn swells and becomes soft and white, add salt to taste and let the water simmer away.
Serve
Serve warm or cold with cream or milk.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Dry corn
- Provides the starch that swells and softens into the hominy texture during long cooking.
- Wood ashes
- Supply the alkali in the lye that loosens the hulls and softens the kernels.
The step that matters
Stirring while the corn simmers for 3 to 4 hours. Corn sits on the bottom of the kettle and scorches easily during long simmering. Frequent stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the kernels from burning while they swell and soften.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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