By Ed Avis
If there is one ingredient that unites Mexican cooking, it is corn. From the moment customers sit down in your restaurant until they walk out the door, corn is part of the experience—in the chips, the tortillas, the tamales, and many other authentic dishes. Corn is even an ingredient in some desserts and beverages.
Last year el Restaurante surveyed readers and learned that about a quarter of them make some or all of their tortillas in-house; since then we’ve heard anecdotally that more and more Mexican restaurants are doing the same. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are nixtamalizing corn themselves—they may be using masa harina (corn tortilla flour) or buying fresh masa. But we surmise that a growing number of Mexican restaurant owners are processing corn in-house.
Jason Tilford, co-owner of Mission Taco Joint in St. Louis, is among them.
“In 2014 we started cooking corn,” Tilford said during an el Restaurante webinar on tortilla making in October. “We do it for our five restaurants in St. Louis, and it’s been a neat experience. We cook the corn and make the masa in a little commissary and ship it to each restaurant. On a busy day each restaurant makes about 2,000 tortillas.”
The corn Tilford uses for his restaurants isn’t the same as you would find in a grocery store or even at a normal farm stand. His corn, purchased from Rovey Seed Co., is specially grown for tortillas.
“Generally speaking, white corn is used for making tortillas,” explains Derek Rovey, president of Rovey Seed Co. “White corn has a different starch, and it’s better suited for tortillas.”
Rovey says his company started specializing in corn for tortillas in the early 1970s. In addition to the white corn, Rovey offers yellow, red, purple and blue corn. The colored corn is bred to highlight the color. All of Rovey’s corn is non- GMO, and they also offer certified organic corn.
“The market for organic is growing quite a bit,” he says. “Particularly people in restaurants who are making their own tortillas are interested in organic.”
Corn From Mexico
Photo by Molly Decoudreaux, courtesy of Masienda
Native corn in Mexico
Three types of native corn in Mexico
Some Mexican restaurants source corn from Mexico, where the grain differs by region. Los Angeles-based Masienda can help them do that.
Founded in 2014, Masienda imports heirloom corn (landraced maize) from small growers in various regions of the country.
“Masa looks different in Oaxaca as it does in Jalisco as it does in Guerrero,” says Jorge Gaviria, founder of Masienda. “It’s directly impacted by the agriculture and climate and landscape.” Gaviria explains that corn with denser, more crystalline starch produces a more toothsome tortilla. “We offer three types that cover the spectrum in texture, color and how finished masa can taste,” Gaviria says. “The bolita is the variety used to make tlayuadas in Oaxaca. It has a very dense starch, so it produces a resilient, strong tortilla that is little more toothsome. On the softer end of the spectrum is blue cónico. This produces a very soft, fluffy tortilla. And then in the middle there’s a variety called olotillo. It’s soft enough to produce a lovely aerated tortilla, but also has enough hold and bite to make a table tortilla and a recipe tortilla.”
Sometimes after a chef has worked with these varieties, he or she seeks other corn options, Gaviria says. “Once customers have a chance to understand what they like about a tortilla, we dial into other varieties that we source.”
Sprouted Corn
Corn, like any grain, will sprout under the right conditions. Sprouting activates enzymes in the corn that begin breaking down the starch, which makes the nutrients more accessible and digestible.
“Sprouting also improves the flavor, because the enzymes convert some of the starch
Sprouted corn
Sprouted purple corn
to maltose, which is a very nice flavor enhancer,” says James Curry, owner of International Food Systems, which supplies sprouted grain flour to restaurants and other food service companies.
Sprouted corn flour can be added to corn tortilla flour or masa to impart some of those nutritional and taste benefits. Curry recommends a mixture that is about 12 to 16 percent sprouted corn flour, by weight. His company makes the sprouted corn from Rovey Seed corn, most often the red, blue and purple varieties.
Sprouted corn is not nixtamalized, Curry says. Rather, it is soaked to add moisture, then put in a sprouting tank for 24 to 48 hours. Once it sprouts it is coarsely ground to flour, then stabilized with salt and vinegar.
“The moisture content of the sprouted corn is about 25 percent, and the vinegar and salt protect it,” Curry says. “The flour has six months of shelf life at room temperature.”
Ed Avis is the publisher of el Restaurante.
