Floriani Red Flint Corn: The Perfect Staple Crop

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You and your dinner guests will marvel at the flavor of polenta made with Floriani. Consider serving your polenta on a traditional wooden board, perhaps accented with lightly cooked kale. 
You and your dinner guests will marvel at the flavor of polenta made with Floriani. Consider serving your polenta on a traditional wooden board, perhaps accented with lightly cooked kale. 
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Floriani cornmeal is beautiful, versatile (so many recipe options!) and supernutritious.
Floriani cornmeal is beautiful, versatile (so many recipe options!) and supernutritious.
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Do you think Floriani red flint corn is striking? Just wait till it’s growing in your garden.
Do you think Floriani red flint corn is striking? Just wait till it’s growing in your garden.
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Grain corn is more versatile than you may think. You can serve slices of golden scrapple infused with thyme, rosemary or other herbs at any meal. Top with maple syrup for a yummy breakfast.
Grain corn is more versatile than you may think. You can serve slices of golden scrapple infused with thyme, rosemary or other herbs at any meal. Top with maple syrup for a yummy breakfast.
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These fluffy, ultraflavorful corn pancakes are great with syrup or strawberries — but they taste incredible plain as well!
These fluffy, ultraflavorful corn pancakes are great with syrup or strawberries — but they taste incredible plain as well!
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Cornbread has been a staple dish in American culinary history, and if it’s not a go-to dish for dinner in your home, it’s time to give it another shot. 
Cornbread has been a staple dish in American culinary history, and if it’s not a go-to dish for dinner in your home, it’s time to give it another shot. 

Grain corn is a terrific crop for homesteaders who want to grow their own staple crops, and it’s productive enough to be rewarding even in urban gardens. You can grow corn anywhere in the continental United States, and it’s easy for any household to harvest, store, and process it into flour and cornmeal. Grain corn is much easier to process than wheat is, and, in many ways, cornmeal is a more versatile grain staple than wheat flour.

A New World of Corn

Cornmeal is a culinary world in itself: cornbread, muffins, pancakes, waffles, polenta, grits, scrapple, cornmeal crusts for fried chicken or vegetable fritters, and, if you boil whole kernels with culinary lime, you enter the world of hominy, hominy grits, and Mexican tortillas and tamales. Yet it’s ironic that despite 88 million acres of corn growing in the United States (the estimate for 2010), there are few choices of grain corn in the grocery store. Cornmeal is such a commodity product that it’s rarely fresh in stores, packages don’t tell you which corn variety was ground to make it, and it’s nearly impossible to buy whole kernels for grinding. But there’s hope.

Floriani Red Flint corn is a rare, open-pollinated corn variety from Italy with unforgettable flavor — and the possibilities for cooking with it are endless. If you’re hoping to become self-sufficient in grain, or if you’re looking for a cornmeal with a rich, distinct taste and texture, then you’ll love Floriani. This heirloom corn is an old variety from the Italian Alps that was originally selected for qualities that make great polenta. This particular variety is a landrace (a locally adapted variety that has more variation than a variety bred for specific qualities) from the Valsugana Valley, where subsistence farmers grew it as the staple food until the mid-20th century. The Alpine farmers dried their crop, shucked the ears, and ground the corn into a coarse meal that they boiled and served as polenta.

While the hulls are red, the meal is a deep yellow with a hint of pink. It is physically beautiful and has a rich, complex flavor to match. ‘Floriani Red Flint’ is the ideal grain corn crop for homesteading: productive, rewarding, and not the usual industrial fare.

  • Published on Oct 28, 2010
Tagged with: corn, cornmeal
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