Learn how to nixtamalize corn, nixtamalization history, and why this process creates more nutrition for us to absorb.
In fall of 2023, when Marissa Ames, former editor-in-chief of MOTHER EARTH NEWS, hosted a livestream on our social media pages on what nixtamalization is and why it’s important to treat corn, many people were intrigued. Because of that overwhelming audience participation, we reached out to two anthropologists to learn more about this ancient way of preparing food.
“Maize is one of the most difficult grains in the world for the human body to safely and efficiently digest,” says Bill Schindler. “It tastes good. It’s filling. But anybody who’s ever eaten corn on the cob in the summer has seen corn in the toilet the next day.”
Nixtamalized Corn Nutrition
Schindler highlights that fact to illustrate that corn passes through us, nutrients and all. He earned his doctorate in archaeology and anthropology from Temple University and founded Eat Like a Human, whose mission is to empower people to feed themselves and their families the most nutritious foods.
“One of the reasons we eat food is to get nutrition,” Schindler explains. “And if you’re eating over-boiled corn on the cob, and our body can’t break it down, there’s something missing in that process. We’re not getting the nutrients from it.”
Grinding corn up into cornmeal doesn’t unlock the complete nutritional benefits of corn either. Nixtamalization is the only way to get the maximum amount of nutrients from maize and make them bioavailable.
Rise of Pellagra and Nixtamalization History
When the Spanish came to the Americas and started spreading corn around the world, many people fell into illness — pellagra.
“The Spanish were conquerors. They thought they were better than everybody else. And so they took foodstuffs, but they didn’t take recipes with them,” says Tanya Peres, a registered professional archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University. “Same thing happened with chocolate. They took chocolate back to Spain, but they didn’t take the recipes that the Aztecs were using to make a hot chocolate drink. They made their own.”
Peres believes another reason why the Spanish didn’t utilize the recipes was that most of the conquistadors were men and many of the Mesoamerican cooks were women.
Corn started being planted and grown in all parts of the world. It became a staple in many diets. But since the food was taken without the culinary technology derived from 9,000 years of codependence — nixtamalization — people weren’t benefiting from corn nutritionally.
“Pellagra is a disease of malnutrition,” Peres says. “It starts out as you’re too sick to eat fresh foods, and then it can eventually lead to death because you’re not taking in the nutrients that you need to. People think corn isn’t nutritious. It is. It just has to be prepared properly.”
Someone can develop pellagra when they have a lack of niacin in their diet, Schindler says. “We have no evidence of any pellagra in the Americas at all prior to colonization. What’s very interesting is that it doesn’t start appearing on the world stage until maize is taken out of the Americas.”
Pellagra reached its peak in the early 1900s, when poor sharecroppers in the American South were mostly eating a corn diet. They started exhibiting the “4 Ds” of pellagra: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death.
“Subsisting almost entirely on maize, since it’s cheap, filling, and tastes good, they weren’t getting nutrients from other things that they would’ve normally been getting,” Schindler says.
So, the real problem wasn’t only that people were eating too much unprocessed corn, but also that they weren’t eating any other nutrient-rich foods, since corn dominated their diets.
“For a modern context, the average middle-class American is eating food from a bunch of different sources. They’re eating maize that isn’t nixtamalized, but they aren’t going to get pellagra because they’re eating so many things. And now, almost every baked good in the world … is fortified with niacin,” Schindler says.
Is the modern Western world in danger of a pellagra outbreak? No. But if we’re eating to maximize the nutrients in the food we’re consuming, we should consider nixtamalization.
What’s the Nixtamalization Process?
“‘Nixtamalization’ is a Nahuatl word, and it’s at least 4,000 years old,” Schindler says. “What’s really cool is that, from an archaeological perspective, we’ve recently developed a technology that allows us to directly identify that process in the archaeological record.”
Since maize has been around for 8,000 years, Schindler is confident the record will show nixtamalization dating back thousands of years as this new technology is implemented.
Traditionally, nixtamalization involves taking wood ash and combining it with water to make an alkaline or basic solution. Maize is simmered in the solution for half an hour to an hour and then removed off the heat to sit overnight. The next day, thanks to chemical and physical processes, the nutritional benefits of the maize are unlocked.
You may find adding wood ash (potassium hydroxide) to food strange and wonder why people started adding it in the first place.
“The reality is, wood ash has been a very important product for all sorts of traditional and ancestral technologies,” Schindler says. “Even in colonial America, behind the houses, they would take all the ashes from the fireplace and allow the rain to percolate through the ashes. They would collect this alkaline-rich water and use it in a lot of different applications, from making soap to acting as a chemical leavener to [making] baking soda. In fact, baking soda is a modern 19th-century lab-created version of what ash can do.”
Today, calcium hydroxide is used instead of wood ash and can be easily purchased as pickling lime in grocery stores.
What Does Nixtamalization Do?
After the nixtamalization process, after corn has soaked in the wood-ash-and-water solution overnight, the skin of the maize is released and rinses off easily. The niacytin, which is a form of niacin that humans can’t digest, is transformed into niacin, which is usable by our bodies.
“A lot of other chemical and physical changes have occurred, including changes in texture and flavor and aroma,” Schindler adds. “The next morning, after it’s done nixtamalizing, the product is called ‘nixtamal.’ And that can be ground and transformed into masa, which is then turned into things like tamales or tortillas.”
If you don’t want to go through the trouble of making it yourself but want nixtamalized corn, you can buy maseca, which is dried masa flour. Just add water, and you can make your own tortillas. One problem is that most of the maseca we have access to has been degerminated for shelf life, which removes most of the nutrients.
“A lot of us stop thinking about the little nuances that make such a big difference within categories of food,” Schindler says. “Those nuances are incredibly important. A tortilla made from degerminated maize and that’s factory-produced is a literally a completely different food from a tortilla you’d get in Oaxaca.”
And those small differences over time build up in both our diets and our palates. A tortilla or a tamale that’s been nixtamalized can deliver different amount of nutrients to our body, but also different textures, aromas, and flavors.
How Long to Boil Corn for Al Dente Corn
- Black corn: 30 minutes or more
- Blue corn: 17 minutes
- Pink corn: 17 minutes
- Red corn: 30 minutes
- White corn: 20 minutes
- Yellow corn: 30 minutes
Maize Tortilla Recipe
Here is Schindler’s recipe for homemade tortillas, from EatLikeAHuman.com. This recipe can be sized up or down depending on how many tortillas you’d like to make.
Ingredients
- Maize kernels
- Pickling lime (calculated as a percentage of the weight of the corn)
- Water (3 times the weight of the corn)
How Much Lime Based on Corn Weight
- Black corn: 0.5 percent
- Blue corn: 0.8 percent
- Pink corn: 0.5 percent
- Red corn: 0.6 percent
- White corn: 1.0 percent
- Yellow corn: 1.3 percent
- Weigh corn to know how much pickling lime is required.
- Measure pickling lime and add a little water; it’ll sizzle and heat up. (Pickling lime is available in the canning aisle.)
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- Rinse maize kernels while the pickling lime is reacting with water.
- Place corn and water in a pot. Add pickling lime and mix well to combine.
- Bring the pot to a simmer (do not boil), and simmer for the amount of time indicated below. You’ll know when it’s ready when you can rub a kernel between your fingers and the skin slips off and when it’s al dente when bitten.
- Cover and sit at room temperature overnight.
- To grind nixtamal into masa, transfer some of the nixtamalized maize to a food processor. Don’t overfill. The dough you’ll create is very thick and will overwork the motor in the food processor. Turn the food processor on to grind maize into a moist dough. The hydration should already be correct, but you may need to add a very little amount of water to get everything to grind and combine properly. When it’s smooth, remove the masa dough from the food processor, and place in a covered container to ensure it doesn’t dry out or lose any moisture.
- Preheat a griddle or skillet to medium-high heat. Taking about a golf-ball-sized piece of masa dough at a time, press into a disc shape using a tortilla press or your hands. Transfer to the preheated griddle, and cook for a few minutes, until the bottom begins to brown and blister. Flip the tortilla with a spatula, and cook for a few more minutes on the remaining side until it browns and blisters. Remove from heat. Repeat process with remaining dough.
The tortillas can be kept warm by storing them stacked together in a towel until you’re ready to use them.
Kenny Coogan earned a master’s degree in global sustainability and has published more than 400 articles on pets, livestock, and gardening. He lives on a 1-acre homestead with a flock of Pekin ducks, managing a permaculture-style landscape. Coogan also runs a successful carnivorous plant nursery in Tampa. Listen to Coogan co-host the “MOTHER EARTH NEWS and Friends” podcast.
