[HN Gopher] Welcome to the Golden Age of Masa
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Welcome to the Golden Age of Masa
Author : sytelus
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-06-26 04:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.epicurious.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.epicurious.com)
| jasonkester wrote:
| Still hasn't made it to France. They don't do corn tortillas or
| even taco shells either.
|
| On my last trip to Central America, I used both my kids' luggage
| allowance to pack 40kg of Masa flour back here.
|
| It's about half gone now, so we'll probably need another run
| soon.
| zwieback wrote:
| Growing corn and doing the lye thing is pretty easy, you could
| make your own version.
| morsch wrote:
| I had Arepas in Paris that I'm sure were made from masa, they
| were incredible.
|
| https://www.leandres.paris/coffee-and-brunch.html
| javier10e6 wrote:
| Good tortillas are moist, soft, pliable and chewie. It was in
| 1978 when I stumble for the first time at corner store in
| Monterrey, MX with tortillas bagged in a plastic bag for sale.
| What in the world? They were cold, and crumbly and stale. Until
| then I was accustomed to get my tortillas from the tortilleria in
| Coyoacan (Mexico City) where I had to stand in line after school
| (12:30) with for "medio kilo de tortillas" which I carried in a
| dry cloth. The tortilleria was a hole-in-the-wall building with a
| large oven with a conveyor belt. In the far end on top was the
| when burly sweaty guy dropping the nixtamal, masa and in the
| opposite end was the "tortillera", a girl also in sweaty clothes
| catching the tortillas from the end of the metal wire conveyor
| belt. She would grab the tortillas with her bare hands, of
| course, and place them on the scale that had two counter weights,
| one for medio kilo and another for kilo. I would giver her the
| cloth, she would put the tortillas on them and wrap them for 3
| pesos. On my way home I would roll tight one tortilla and snack
| on it as a "delivery fee". I remember in school some girls
| throwing the slur "tortillera" to her enemies. I couldn't
| disagree more. The tortilleras of my childhood dispensed with the
| most delicious staples of my existence.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The "second wave" tortillas I can get near me are just as good as
| the tortillas I've had at the Micheline starred Mexican
| restaurant Topolobampo (and trust me, the taco was amazing).
| Maybe tacos aren't the best way to use such fancy corn, but I've
| also had tlacoyos that were made with heirloom masa that taste
| like they could've been made with Maseca.
|
| Maybe it's just me, but I see this article as marketing expensive
| corn meal to an unsuspecting public. I guess what I'm saying is,
| if you're considering trying something new because of this
| article, before flying in fancy masa from Portland, OR, see if
| there's a tortilla shop downtown.
| Syzygies wrote:
| The story goes that when Masienda's Oaxacan corn reaches the
| taco griddle at an upscale Mexican restaurant, the aroma makes
| the Mexican staff tear up with childhood memories.
|
| The upscale restaurant was making tortillas before. One
| variable changed: the corn source.
|
| I cook from all over the world. When can I beat a Michelin
| restaurant? It's like chess; you've got to go with what pieces
| are in positions you can exploit.
|
| Tortillas freshly griddled from masa freshly ground from
| nixtamal made from Masienda corn is like having a queen in the
| center of the board. I'm focused on Mexican for this reason,
| and this reason alone. You must be doing it wrong?
| inasio wrote:
| Tortillas are like bread in the sense that eating them fresh
| out of the oven/comal is amazing regardless of whether you're
| using freshly nixtamilized masa or maseca (or a fancy sourdough
| vs regular flour/yeast). This is especially the case with corn
| tortillas, flour tortillas are easier to reheat and be tasty,
| in my experience.
| igouy wrote:
| Yes: fresh vs convenient.
|
| Once you can tell a baker's bread is stale, you can also tell
| when that bread is fresh.
|
| Yes: stale bread and stale flour tortillas can be rescued
| somewhat by re-heating, but stale corn tortillas seem to need
| a bigger transformation: fried into chips, cooked in beans...
| teslabox wrote:
| Many stores have Bob's Red Mill Organic Masa. A friend was
| visiting, I was trying to get her to give up on her no-
| carbohydrate ambitions. She scarfed down her flour tortillas that
| were included with the meat she'd purchased earlier. Then she
| tried my lumpy home-made corn tortilla: "that's delicious".
|
| Corn (and other seeds) have a lot of anti-nutrients - this is one
| reason people have gravitated to refined grains. The anti-
| nutrients are deactivated when the seed is boiled in an alkali -
| the process is called Nixtamalization [0]. Native Americans
| boiled their corn in wood ash. Lime [1] is now used for this
| purpose.
|
| It's said the European explorers took Corn back to Europe, but
| didn't realize the wisdom of boiling corn in wood ash. Corn has a
| good amount of Vitamin B-3, but eating a diet of non-nixtamalized
| corn causes Pellegra [2] (Vitamin B-3 deficiency), due to the
| niacin not being available on account of it being locked up in
| the starch. (I think the Slate Star Codex blog talked about this
| phenomenon. Similarly, Cassava (yuca) root was taken from South
| America to Africa, but they didn't share how important it is to
| remove the cyanide in the outer shell and stem in the center...)
|
| Making your own tortillas is very easy. I follow the directions
| on Bob's Masa [4] package: corn, salt, water, wait, spoon onto
| plastic wrap, fold plastic wrap, crush into tortilla-like shape,
| apply to hot plate.
|
| I have ambition to use the lime I purchased at the mexican grocer
| to make my own masa, but I haven't gotten past watching videos on
| Youtube. I need some corn... Maybe I should grow corn this
| summer. I might have enough time to get some seeds in the ground.
| :)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Potential_toxicity
|
| [4] https://www.bobsredmill.com/organic-golden-masa-harina-
| flour...
| igouy wrote:
| > Making your own tortillas is very easy.
|
| True, once you've learned: how wet to make the dough, how small
| to make the dough balls, how thin to press the dough balls, how
| to peel the plastic from the pressed tortilla, how to release
| the pressed tortilla from your hand onto the hot pan, how long
| to leave the tortilla so that they'll inflate like balloons
| when flipped, ... in other words, there's a knack to it.
|
| (And people who make tortillas balloon so reliably -- that they
| can slice them open, and pour an egg inside to cook -- have
| developed true mastery.)
|
| Also, making your own tortillas is very time consuming.
| Spivak wrote:
| Or because it's your own kitchen and not a Michelin star
| restaurant you can just mess up literally every step of the
| process and still get something delicious. You act like you
| have to study the press for years before attempting to make
| your first tortilla not supervised by your grandma.
| igouy wrote:
| Perhaps you don't cook for other people.
| Spivak wrote:
| Or because it's your own kitchen and not a Michelin star
| restaurant you can just mess up literally every step of
| the process, still get something delicious, and people's
| reactions will be "wow you made these? They're so good."
| igouy wrote:
| Whatever makes you happy.
| jfengel wrote:
| A tip that may or may not help:
|
| I don't make tortillas, but I do make pitas, which have a
| similar ballooning thing. The best way I've found to get them
| to puff is to preheat the broiler and a cast-iron pan, then
| put the dough disk on the pan and the pan under the broiler.
|
| Cooking it from both sides like once at that gives me
| spectacular puffs every time. I'm not sure why I can't get
| that from the stove top -- overcooking? undercooking? too
| high a temperature? -- but this setup works great for me.
|
| (On my stove, with my pans, under my broiler. This all seems
| to have so many variables that maybe any advice other than
| "practice on what works for you" is useless.)
| djrogers wrote:
| > Bob's Red Mill Organic Masa
|
| Note - that's Masa Harina, not masa. Masa marina is dried corn
| flour, freshly ground masa hasn't been dried.
| Spivak wrote:
| Masa can also be masa harina that has been rehydrated so the
| distinction is minimal these days.
| ragazzina wrote:
| >I was trying to get her to give up on her no-carbohydrate
| ambitions
|
| ..but why?
|
| It's already very hard to follow a low-carb diet.
| teslabox wrote:
| She was trapped with hunger cravings, and would try to
| satiate herself with sugar-free (stevia/etc) junk foods.
|
| At one point she came up to me with my haagen daz ice cream
| container and asked, "why does my brain work, when I eat
| haagen daz?" I told her about how the brain runs on glucose
| AND fructose, that she was starving her brain of glucose, and
| that when a brain doesn't have any fructose it transforms
| some of the glucose into fructose, and that trying to go no-
| carbohydrate is very inefficient.
|
| Eventually I think she decided it'd be okay to eat fruit.
| otrahuevada wrote:
| Good thing corn is super plentiful. What's the name of that
| phenomenon where rich people take poor people staples and this
| drives access to those things away from them? Like what happened
| with quinoa.
|
| Lol -4 points y'all if you feel so hurt at least please have the
| decency to speak your mind.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
| returningfory2 wrote:
| On the other hand, if quinoa (for example) is being exported it
| means the farmers are making more money, otherwise they would
| just sell it domestically. The worldwide popularity of quinoa
| generates a net wealth transfer into the (historically poor)
| quinoa areas from outside.
| andruc wrote:
| Gentrification of food?
| j4yav wrote:
| Is there a good source in Europe/Netherlands? I miss real Mexican
| food so much, and I have found a bunch of ways to get close to
| real tacos here at home, but the biggest gap is always the
| tortillas.
| mtts wrote:
| You can get masa harina at Albert Heijn (the bigger ones). But
| other than that: no.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| I once had guacamole in Helsinki. Never again.
| j4yav wrote:
| Nothing you can buy pre-made is even close, that I have found
| anyway.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The Swedish site Andale.se has a selection of dry masa at all,
| which so far seems unusual.
|
| Site is in Swedish though, and not sure if they ship outside of
| Sweden. Goodling around I found https://www.mexgrocer-eu.com/
| which is in the Hauge.
| lfxyz wrote:
| Because I'm lazy I normally get the P.A.N. brand from the
| Albert Heijn, which is really meant for arepas but it does an
| ok job. If I fancy a short bike ride to De Pijp in Amsterdam,
| then Tjin's Toko sells the Maseca brand.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Thought this was going to about Masayoshi Son!
| ozten wrote:
| I've been nixtamalizing corn and using a hand mill. It is a lot
| of work, but the tortillas are almost a different product than
| store bought. So much deep corn flavor.
|
| Having access to half a dozen different heirloom varieties,
| including blue, is fun.
| not_jd_salinger wrote:
| > than store bought
|
| Just for clarification do you mean "store bought tortillas" or
| "store bought" masa mix (the dehydrated kind), or "store
| bought" masa meaning you went to your local Mexican supermarket
| and get some fresh ground masa?
|
| I've never done the last option, but have used the dehydrated
| masa mix and, for not much work, that alone is a huge
| improvement over store bought tortillas, but have heard that it
| still falls quite short of getting it still fresh from a local
| store.
| ozten wrote:
| Both! I've made tortillas from store bought masa harina for
| over a decade.
|
| I've bought typical corn tortillas at the store as well as
| tastier refrigerated ones.
|
| Starting from corn kernels is a huge difference to both.
|
| What I understand about manufactured masa harina ("corn
| flour") is that masa paste is baked to drive out the water
| and make it shelf stable. This also cooks out some of the
| deep corn flavor that you can't get back.
| igouy wrote:
| > This also cooks out some of the deep corn flavor that you
| can't get back.
|
| And yet, from masa harina, freshly cooked tortillas are
| still "a huge improvement over store bought tortillas" "a
| different product than store bought".
| djrogers wrote:
| > Both! I've made tortillas from store bought masa harina
| for over a decade
|
| Note that's a completely different thing from store bought
| freshly ground masa.
| Syzygies wrote:
| Here's a technical question about nixtamal for HN readers. I
| wouldn't expect an answer in foodie forums unless Nathan Myhrvold
| was active:
|
| Every recipe for cooking corn into nixtamal calls for cal as a
| percentage of the weight of the corn, and then to cover by a
| certain amount with water. The specified cal is all over the map,
| and the amount of water corn can absorb varies.
|
| For comparison, many bread bakers can't manage to take their
| starter into account when calculating dough hydration. They still
| have an understandable number they can vary, but it's not
| calibrated and of less use to others.
|
| For comparison, most brine recipes calculate salt as a percentage
| of the water, without regard to the target protein. Even Thomas
| Keller's newest cookbook "The French Laundry, Per Se" notes that
| all fish in each restaurant passes through a 10% brine for 10 to
| 30 minutes.
|
| Paul Bertolli in "Cooking by Hand" advises computing the
| equilibrium salinity of a brine left for many hours or days. One
| computes a water percentage for the meat, accounting for bone
| weight and muscle solids, and adds salt to the brine under the
| assumption that the meat will reach this equilibrium salinity.
|
| Just as anyone who fears a complex recipe is ducking less
| dexterity work than five minutes of practice for a concert
| pianist, any cook who fears this calculation is ducking less
| conceptual work than any reader here engaged in five minutes of
| programming. This is a trivial spreadsheet.
|
| I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of a chemical mechanism where
| the cal in nixtamal all binds to the corn, ignoring the water. My
| nixtamal recipe is 4:1 water to corn (enough for every variety
| I've tried) and 0.5% cal by total weight of the water and corn.
| This is less than many recipes but it consistently works.
|
| If equilibrium pH is a good proxy for what happens to the cal (as
| CO2 levels are a good proxy for Covid exposure risk), then I
| should be tweaking my recipe each time, and recording the
| equilibrium pH. This would be a simple linear regression, leading
| to a percentage for corn comparable to the percentage Paul
| Bertolli applies to meat.
|
| I get by without knowing this percentage, because I use a fixed
| water to corn ratio by weight, and cal percentage is not as
| critical as bread dough hydration. Too little cal doesn't work;
| some find the taste or texture of too much cal objectionable. One
| also varies how completely one rinses the next day, as cal helps
| the tortilla texture and acts as a preservative.
|
| Does anyone here know more about this?
| hundt wrote:
| This is an excellent question that I never thought of!
|
| My guess is that
|
| - there is a large range of cal concentrations that work fine
| without tasting bad, and
|
| - the amount of water absorbed by the corn is very hard to
| predict, as it varies from batch to batch, and
|
| - unlike brining meat, it is unlikely that two people doing
| this by hand would vary how much water they are adding by 5x or
| even 3x, because there is no reason to add a lot more water
| than is needed, and
|
| - recipes are simpler if you base the cal amount on the corn
| amount and then add "enough water" (which may change once you
| start cooking).
|
| So maybe no one doing it for non-industrial audiences has
| bothered narrowing it down.
|
| I use around half as much as you (3:1 water to corn and 1% cal
| by weight of corn) and it works well for me.
| Syzygies wrote:
| Bricia Lopez, in "Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico"
| recommends an Indian wet grinder for grinding nixtamal into masa.
| One grinds for 40 minutes, scraping down as needed, after adding
| 1/3 water by weight. This yields a too-wet masa that one corrects
| with masa harina; the masa still comes out much better than
| straight masa harina, even Masienda's. A wet grinder is easy to
| clean.
|
| One can find much more information about this in a thread I
| started on my favorite food forum:
|
| https://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/10767-nixtamal-masa-taco...
|
| Masienda corn deserves the highest praise. I've tried other chef
| favorites such as Anson Mills. Their corn is remarkable for other
| uses, but doesn't come close for masa.
|
| This weekend I bought prepared masa as a reference, from
| Primavera, a Mexican restaurant stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's
| Market in San Francisco. Most commercial masa found in California
| is generic and inferior to what one makes from Oaxacan corn from
| Masienda. Primavera makes their own nixtamal from their own corn
| sources, with exactly my aspirations, and there's an argument
| they serve the best Mexican food in the Bay Area.
|
| Their masa was smoother than I get from the Indian wet grinder,
| but this had no impact on making tortillas. (Most general purpose
| home tools such as meat grinders or food processors yield masa
| that is too course for tortillas.)
|
| Their masa was not as flavorful. It serves their purposes well,
| as they use it for everything, and it needs to be a neutral foil
| to many kinds of food. Masienda corn almost requires pairing like
| wine; every corn is different.
| hundt wrote:
| You can get a smooth product from a food processor if you are
| willing to do it in small batches, very slowly (I take around 5
| minutes to process 1 cup of nixtamal in my 11-cup food
| processor, with pauses to scrape it down). I can do that
| without adding too much water (and in fact I have to add more
| water after I'm done processing).
|
| I also bought from Masienda; they are indeed great!
| Syzygies wrote:
| https://masienda.com/on-masa/food-processor/
|
| > It's time to set the record straight, friends: food
| processors absolutely work for turning nixtamal into masa.
|
| > A basalt molino will still yield the best results for
| making masa.
|
| Primavera's masa was smoother than my Indian wet grinder
| masa, which I am certain is smoother than food processor
| masa. One can also make tortillas from masa harina. The
| question is what has been lost? The limitations of masa
| harina by itself are widely understood.
|
| Before giving up on already available home equipment, I'd
| compromise on the percentage of masa harina rather than the
| smoothness of the masa. For example, a commercial blender
| such as the Vita-Prep can puree anything if one adds enough
| water. Then dry out the water, as the Masienda blog advises,
| either by dehydration or by adding masa harina. The
| limitations of masa harina aren't apparent in smaller
| quantities.
| hundt wrote:
| As I wrote, I didn't find the "drying out" step to be
| necessary. If you are patient enough you can process the
| nixtamal into dough with only a tiny bit of water added.
|
| Edit: I don't have a wet grinder so I can't compare to
| that. It is smooth enough to get the pocket though.
| juancn wrote:
| "masa" literally means dough. There's nothing unique about the
| word.
|
| I get using "tortilla" which has a very specific meaning, but
| "masa"? There's a perfectly good, common english word that means
| exactly the same.
|
| I don't know, it kind of rubs me the wrong way.
| fouc wrote:
| Masa (or masa de maiz) (English: /'ma:s@/; Spanish
| pronunciation: ['masa]) is a maize dough that comes from ground
| nixtamalized corn.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masa
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Behold the native Spanish speaker from somewhere other than
| Mexico or Central America.
| mc32 wrote:
| Eh, English likes cooptimg words and takes broad meanings and
| turns them to specific meanings. Like "bouillon" and many many
| others.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "masa" literally means dough.
|
| And "salsa" literally means "sauce", and so does "mole".
|
| Yet, when used outside of their source language (which includes
| in Spanish for "mole"), they take on a different meaning and,
| even without qualification, they each often have a
| contextually-special meaning when used in particulsr contexts
| even in the source language (well, I don't know that from
| experience for "mole", not having a lot of experience around
| native Nahuatl speakers, but its definitely true of salsa as
| well as masa.)
|
| > I get using "tortilla" which has a very specific meaning, but
| "masa"? There's a perfectly good, common english word that
| means exactly the same.
|
| The use of unqualified "masa" in English to refer to "masa
| (harina) de maiz" is taken fairly directly from the fact that
| native Spanish speakers in the USA use it that way.
|
| And there are words with close meanings in English to even that
| (cornmeal, cornflour--in American English, but not elsewhere
| where that refers to what Americans call "cornstarch"), but not
| exactly the same practical mmeaning, and the difference
| matters.
| twalla wrote:
| Even tortilla has a different (delicious) meaning[1] when you
| compare Mexican/Central American Spanish to Spanish Spanish.
|
| 1. https://www.seriouseats.com/tortilla-espanola-spanish-
| potato...
| Spivak wrote:
| And harina just means flour so masa harina just means "the
| flour for dough" but there isn't another word that has caught
| on for flour made from hominy. You could start the trend of
| calling it "hominy flour" or "alkaline cornflour" but it would
| have to overcome the inertia of English speakers knowing it as
| masa.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Wait until you hear about how "corn" just means grain, or used
| to anyway. Or how "flour" tortillas are actually always wheat
| flour.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-06-28 23:03 UTC)