Heirloom maize and masa harina from Masienda

By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: Since this article was first published, Masienda founder Jorge Gaviria published a cookbook — Masa: Techniques, Recipes, and Reflections on a Timeless Staple. Read our review.]

Ten years ago, most people who live and eat in the United States had never heard the word “nixtamal.” I know what you’re thinking: Still today most have not heard it. (It’s pronounced “neesh-ta-mal.”) But many who are serious about Mexican food most certainly have heard the word — and probably tasted dishes made from fresh nixtamal, as more and more chefs here are nixtamalizing corn in their own restaurants in order to make outstanding tortillas and masa-centric dishes.

Nixtamalization, of course, is the ancient process by which maize (corn) is transformed by soaking it, then cooking it in an alkaline solution, making it suitable to grind into masa, the dough from which tortillas (and tamales, sopes, tetelas, etc.) are made.

Prepared with lime (calcium hydroxide, known in Spanish as “cal”) or wood ashes, the alkaline solution loosens the pericarp (skin) on each kernel — so it can be removed, making the kernels easier to grind than they would otherwise be. It also unlocks proteins and frees up the niacin in the grain, making it much more nutritious. It kills pathogens as well, making it safer.

Once that pericarp is removed, the blanched grain becomes nixtamal. From there, it can either be cooked and eaten whole — most notably in pozole — or ground into masa, the dough from which tortillas and so forth are made. 

Invented by the Aztec and Maya civilizations, nixtamalization is a process that has been key to culture in Mesoamerica since at least 1500 to 1200 BCE, according to Sophie Coe, who wrote in The Oxford Companion to Food that “typical household equipment for making nixtamal out of maize is known on the south coast of Guatemala” during that period. Coe is also author of America’s First Cuisines. 

The exact time and place where nixtamalization was first accomplished is uncertain, Amanda Gálvez, PhD, tells us in Nixtamal: A Guide to Masa Preparation in the United States. “But archeological sites dating to around 1000 B.C. point to the use of alkali from residues found in ceramics.”

You may be wondering: Can dried corn be consumed without nixtamalizing it? Yes! That’s what cornmeal — also known as grits or polenta — is. But if you’ve ever tried making a tortilla with cornmeal, you know that it doesn’t hold together. 

Here’s how Gálvez explains why the nixtamalizing transformation is essential to make tortillas:

“The original grain hemicellulose partially dissolves, and starch becomes gelatinized (hydrated, swollen and cooked. The masa swells and cellulose is chemically transformed by alkali. All of these changes allow the masa to be flexible, capable of being extended flat before being baked on a hot pan, resulting in a thin, flexible bread.” 

What is masa harina? Moist masa dough that is dried and then ground into powder. More on that presently. 

Nixtamal’s next wave

Let’s return to those forward-looking (and backward-looking!) chefs cooking Mexican food in the U.S., who have committed themselves to making their own masa, starting with nixtamalizing in their own restaurants. In early 2015, Food & Wine magazine called house-made tortillas a “new trend to watch for” in the coming year, though the story didn’t specify whether these tortillas were actually made with freshly made nixtamal. House-made tortillas had already been big where I lived (and still live), in Dallas, for years. In fact, trailblazing Dallas chef AQ Pittman (then known as Anastacia Quiñones) was nixtamalizing corn to make her own fresh masa at a restaurant called Alma back in 2011. (She continues to do so at the restaurant where she’s now executive chef, José.) Since 2015, the house-made tortilla trend — including in-house nixtamalization — quickly picked up steam, and it’s now going on all over the country.

Which brings us to the new wave: A growing number of nixtamal-focused chefs in the U.S. are using heirloom corn varieties sourced from Mexico to make nixtamal that’s much more nuanced and deeply flavored than nixtamal made from widely-available (industrially farmed) white maize.  

Behind that movement is purveyor Jorge Gaviria, a chef and entrepreneur who fell into the heirloom seed movement when he apprenticed with Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in 2013. The following year, Gaviria learned of some three million small-scale farmers in Mexico, a number of whom had been collaborating with seed breeders to bolster native populations and were growing traditional, flavor-focused native varieties. He started buying surplus corn from 100 of them, and when he learned that Mexico City superstar chef Enrique Olvera (Pujol) was about to open Cosme in New York City, Gaviria offered to supply him with heirloom corn. Olvera agreed, and Gaviria’s company — Masienda — was born. 

Before long, Gaviria was also supplying Carlos Salgado (Taco Maria), Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago), Gabriela Cámara (Contramar, Cala) and Sean Brock (Minero), Steve Santana (Taquiza) and others. 

Here’s where it gets really exciting for home cooks: You can buy several varieties of the heirloom corn — along with cal, and everything you need to make tortillas, such as a fabulous-looking tortilla press and a traditional comal — online at Masienda. In his 2019 cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa, Pujol’s Olvera called Masienda “a wonderful project that we recommend as the best source of heirloom corn outside of Mexico.”

The Masienda website is also a treasure-trove of excellent videos about making nixtamal, grinding it into masa, making tortillas and more.

Although making masa for tortillas is extremely involved, no special equipment is required to simply nixtamalize the corn — all you need is a big pot. Grinding it is where things get complicated. Professional molinos (mills) are gigantic and extremely expensive; a smaller molinito is $1,750 and weighs 82 pounds. Masienda sells a small, inexpensive hand-cranked mill, and also has a video showing how to make masa using your food processor. I haven’t yet attempted either, but plan to do so soon.

Two easy ways to enjoy heirloom maize

I was eager to make nixtamal, though, so I bought a sack of single-origin maiz cacahuazintle from Edo de México, nixtamalized it and made an out-of-this-world pozole — literally the best one I’ve ever tasted. Want in on that? Here’s a story about it, with my recipe. Through Cooks Without Borders CookShop, you can purchase the Pozole Kit Masienda sells, another with other Masienda products. 

But even if you don’t want to go to the trouble of making nixtamal, you can still make tortillas, tetelas, tamales and other masa-driven dishes using heirloom corn. That’s because Masienda also sells special “chef-grade” heirloom corn masa harina it produces itself. (It’s also available through links at our CookShop.)

I learned about Masienda’s masa harina from Olivia Lopez — who recently became Cooks Without Borders’ official Mexican cuisine expert/advisor. Lopez, chef de cuisine at Dallas restaurant Billy Can Can, purchased a molinito from Masienda in early pandemic, and when the shipment from Mexico was delayed, the folks at Masienda sent her some of its heirloom masa harina to play with while she waited. 

The Colima, Mexico-born chef, who plans one day to open a tortilla shop in Dallas inspired by Olvera’s Molino in Mexico City, is in process of developing several recipes for Cooks Without Borders using the heirloom masa harina. (Look for them in coming days!)

Watch our Cooks Without Borders video featuring Jorge Gaviria and Olivia Lopez.

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