Old Fashioned Hulled Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the corn
Shell the corn.
Place the corn in an iron kettle.
Cover the corn with cold water.
Add the bag of wood ashes.
Make the lye and soak
Boil until the corn looks yellow and tastes strong of the alkali.
Remove the bag.
Boil the corn in the lye for over an hour.
Pour off the lye.
Add fresh water.
Simmer until the corn swells.
If hulls do not come off by stirring, turn off the water and rub them off with a towel.
Add more water.
Simmer and serve
Simmer for 3 to 4 hours, stirring often to prevent burning.
When the corn swells and becomes soft and white, add salt to taste.
Let the water simmer away.
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
- Ripe, dry corn
- Provides the kernels that swell and soften into hominy during alkaline cooking.
- Wood ashes
- Supply the alkali that loosens the hulls and softens the kernels.
The step that matters
Stirring during the long simmer. Hominy sitting on the bottom of the kettle can scorch over the 3 to 4 hour simmer, so stirring often keeps it from burning.
“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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