Welcome to the Golden Age of Masa | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to the Golden Age of Masa

epicurious.com

57 pointssytelus53 comments

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> 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".

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.

I had Arepas in Paris that I'm sure were made from masa, they were incredible.

https://www.leandres.paris/coffee-and-brunch.html

Growing corn and doing the lye thing is pretty easy, you could make your own version.

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...

> 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.

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.)

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.

Perhaps you don't cook for other people.

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."

Whatever makes you happy.

> 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.

Masa can also be masa harina that has been rehydrated so the distinction is minimal these days.

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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?

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.

Check this out, it will be of interest to you, stores, recipes and places where you find the high quality tortillas

https://www.youtube.com/c/ArreMexicanEssen/about https://www.instagram.com/arre.mexicanessen/

Kellys expat in Amsterdam carries maseca harena, as well as various dried chilies, and imported tortillas: https://www.kellys-expat-shopping.nl/en/world-foods/mexican/

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.

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.

I once had guacamole in Helsinki. Never again.

Nothing you can buy pre-made is even close, that I have found anyway.

You can get masa harina at Albert Heijn (the bigger ones). But other than that: no.

Thought this was going to about Masayoshi Son!

"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.

> "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.

Wait until you hear about how "corn" just means grain, or used to anyway. Or how "flour" tortillas are actually always wheat flour.

Masa (or masa de maíz) (English: /ˈmɑːsə/; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmasa]) is a maize dough that comes from ground nixtamalized corn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masa

It applies to any flour based dough. Not just corn. "masa de maiz" literally means "corn dough".

I'm a native spanish speaker BTW. I get all the nuances.

I'm not a native speaker, but I was also expecting a totally different article from the title. I'm surprised more people didn't find it jarring!

Behold the native Spanish speaker from somewhere other than Mexico or Central America.

Eh, English likes coöptimg words and takes broad meanings and turns them to specific meanings. Like “bouillon” and many many others.

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.

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...

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

Gentrification of food?

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.

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