I like hominy. I make chili with hominy. I made chili for a friend with hominy and she and her husband weren't sure what it was. She thought it was potatoes, he thought garbanzo beans. Both wrong, it was hominy. When I told her what it was, I started to wonder, what exactly is hominy?
Wikipedia has demystified the mysterious mystery that is this odd food:
"Hominy or nixtamal is dried maize (corn) kernels which have been treated with an alkali. The traditional U.S. version involves soaking dried corn in lye-water (sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide solution), traditionally derived from wood ash, until the hulls are removed. Mexican recipes describe a preparation process consisting primarily of cooking in lime-water (calcium hydroxide). In either case, the process is called nixtamalization, and removes the germ and the hard outer hull from the kernels, making them more palatable, easier to digest, and easier to process.
The earliest known usage of nixtamalization was in what is present-day Guatemala around 1500–1200 BC."
After reading this, I'm a bit word about consuming the stuff. It's SO good and I love it in my chili and posole, but do I really want to eat kernels of corn that have soaked in sodium hydroxide? Eh, screw it, I'm sure I've eaten things in my life that were much more harmful (such as starfish).
This brings about the bigger question...are corn nuts fried/over processed hominy? They kind of look like it. I'll try to find the answer to that one!
Live on yee hominy, live on!
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