stories:
Nagging Question
Can You Eat Ornamental Indian Corn?
It adorns holiday tables but seems inedible
The hard, multicolored ears of corn that decorate tabletops and front doors around this time of year are, in theory, edible. If you cooked ornamental corn and ate it right off the cob, it would taste pretty bland, but it wouldn’t hurt you, according to Edith Munro, communications manager for the Iowa Corn Growers Association.
That’s because it’s all starch. During the early stages of corn’s maturation process, the kernels are filled with a milky material that is primarily sugars, which is why it tastes so sweet when it’s cooked. As the corn continues to age, however, those sugars break down into starches.
“Gradually, corn has been bred to retain its sweetness,” Munro says, as well as for its uniform yellow coloring. Corn that’s not commercially bred has been lumped into the genre of “Indian corn.” Some varieties of Indian corn are now grown for ornamental use only.
Other varieties of colored corn are still grown and used for food. They’re generally ground into cornmeal and eaten in the form of tacos, corn chips, and so on. (See some Chowhound recommendations for blue corn.)
That's a bit oversimplistic. As someone who actually has tried to eat "indian corn", here are the basics
1. Corn is gernally divided into eight main groups, Flint,Dent,Flour,Sweet,Pop,Wax, and Pod.
2. Sweet Corn (what most fresh eating corn is ) has a mutation that keeps its sugar from converting into starch, which gives it a longer period when it is that soft stuff we eat fresh (this point is tecnically called the "milk stage") You wont see any on purpose sweet corn as Indian corn, since when mature and dry it is rather unattracive (it wrinkles up since sugar takes up less space than starch when dry). However from time to time (especially at farmers markets who will often have had a sweet corn and indan corn fields too close together so that there is some pollen mixing (conventional wisdom holds that to keep corn pure, seperate varities by at least two miles) you may see cobs with the odd wrinkly sweet corn kernel (if you do and have the space, it can be fun to plant these kernels, as they often have the indain parent colorfuness and you can get tecnicolored sweet corn!)
3. Flint, Flour, and Dent Corn all can be used to make corn meal when ground. Most of the corn grown for food in this country is Dent corn which is idenfiable by having a dent (or dimple) in the top of the kernel. Flor and flint corns do not have such a dimple; the best way to tell which is which is as follows if the kernels are sort of translucent (you can sort of see into them) its probably flint if thier completely opaque it may be flour (these three sort of grade into each other so you can see kernels that are sort of middle ground) Most of the Indian Corn sold in this country is flint, with the odd flour and dent thrown in ("Earth tones" is a dent Indian corn) Flour and dent make better meal than flint but are more prone to bug damage, so are less commonly seen in markets) all three can in theory be ground into corn meal (i've used an electric coffee grinder for this and then a fine mesnt seive to seperate the meal from the bigger peices), but flint is usally a bit too hard for home mills to handle without breaking. Flour corn is usally soft enough that it can be ground with some ease and as the name suggest yeilds a fine flour. Dent meal is somewhere in the midde. Also note two things, One a lot of corn meal tastes better if the kernels are toasted first (you can just spead them on a baking sheet put another sheet on top of them (they will jump!) and bake for a while (in alternative a microwave works pretty well too) until the skins turn brown. Two, in commercial production, corn usally undegoues a process called Niximization to make its niacin avaliable for consuption (the process also removes the kernels skins) however niximization is probably best not attepted at home as it is messy and potetially dangerous (It involves boling the kernels in a solution containg a compound like Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) or Calcium Hydroxide (quicklime) both of which are extremely caustic) So, if you are eating a lot of your own meal, make sure you have an adeqaute alternate source of niacin in your diet, or you can develop a deficency disease called pellagra.
4. popcorn is a kind of superflint whose seed coat is suffeciently thick to keep moisture in and allow the kernel to be popped. Most (in fact, for pratical purposes all) of the "mini" indian corn sold is popcorn. If you are going to eat your Indain corn this is proably the easiest to do, as all you have to do is shell it (take the kernels off the cob) and then treat is as you would the popcorn you buy at the store.
5. Don't worry about Pod and Wax corn, both a rare, and you are unlikely to bump into either unless you go looking for them specifically (pod corn has minature husks around each kernel, and is used in some crafting projects. Wax corn is usally found mostly in Asian Countries as is generally sold frozen (I will freely admit I don't know a lot about this kind of corn)
In conculsion one final caveat. While edible in an of itself, care shoud be taken in selecting indian corn if you plant on eathing it later. A lot of commerical Indian corn is sprayed with varios chemicals and fixers, to make it last longer (as they dry out, the cobs can become brittle and lose kernels if they are knocked about) and keep the bugs out of it. A lot of independent Indian corn (what is sold at farmstands and farmer's markets) is not sprayed making it safer, but becuse of this under less than ideal conditions, say getting wet again after it has dried, can be moldy or have insects in it. Any corn that has sign of this (white or back mold, discoloration of the kernels bits of frass (bug poop) "cookie cutter" holes in kernels (if you see that, it means the corn is proably not that year's crop, as the bugs who cause that are storage pests, not field pests so corn that has them is gernally from a previos year)) probably should be regarded as contaimated and should not be used for consumption.
There're are companies that sell "indian" corn as gourmet popcorn, you're supposed to put the ear in a paper bag & pop the kernals in the microwave.
Try making Parched Corn. Use indian or sweet corn dried on the cob or frozen corn dried in a slow oven till hard. Preheat pan on med. heat. Do not use water or oils. Drop in shelled corn kernels and toast them, turning or stirring frequently to keep from burning. When corn is brown and crunchy it is done.
Parched Corn is an ideal trail food, light and easily stored for long periods. It was a staple of the French-Canadians, the fur traders and mountain men, as well as Indian tribes.
parch corn is indeed a good idea. In my experiance, parch corn usally works best if your starting with a dent (the industry standard for the commecial "corn nut" is an old wide kerneled dent called Hickory King) using actual factual sweet cron doesnt usally work so well, as the complete lack of starc the krenels means that they carmelize rather than puffing. Flint can work but if you have to make a point of removing any kernesl that don't puff up, an full natural flint corn kernel can easily chip your tooth.
As a funny aside this year, while wandering around in NYC, I bumped into a little grocery store who amongst its indian corn offerings had quite a quntity of cobs which despite thier unusual colorations were very cleary the S. American corn known as "mais chuple"; the vareity of corn used to make the Perivant parch corn analouge cancha.
True, you don't get a puffed up kernel like corn nuts and you do need good teeth, but they have alot of food value for a small package. The old trappers would grind them and add to water to make a soupy mush or make pemmican (suet,dried meat, and parched corn mix together). I always leave a few ears each fall to dry on the stalk. Better than candy when out hunting.