Mock Lye Hominy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick and wash the hominy.
Pour boiling water over the hominy, using three times its bulk.
Cook
Heat the mixture until it almost reaches boiling point for 1 day or longer.
When very tender and mushy, stir in the weak lye.
Season
Add salt to taste and season with bacon or ham fryings.
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
- Cracked store hominy
- Forms the main body; its starch softens into a mushy texture during long, gentle cooking.
- Weak lye made from wood ashes
- Alkaline; it helps loosen the hulls and soften the kernels.
The step that matters
Cooking until very tender before adding the lye. Long, gentle heating softens the kernels fully. The lye is stirred in only after the hominy is very tender, so kernels that are undercooked will stay hard and chewy. Keep the mixture just below boiling throughout.
“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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