I live in a big city in Canada and this is my second year with an urban vegetable garden. While my harvests don't look as impressive as yours, and I don't have the space for big plants like corn, I love watching your video shorts for inspiration. I'm slowly discovering what grows best in my space, and this year our green bean harvest has been good enough to start freezing portions to use over the long winter. Same with our kale and swiss chard. Thanks for making videos like these to show what's possible with traditional cooking methods and patience!
When I lived in Spain ( I'm going back next week) I would have corn everywhere where I had low growing plants. Not densely but enough to provide some shade. It helped during the hot months with the heat stress for lettuce etc.and they grew better.
As a Mexican I personally don’t like lengua 😂 but I think it’s SO awesome that you guys have learned so much from Mexican culture and enjoy it as much as you do :) it warms my heart to see this and also the fact that you’re quite clear over where these practices come from instead of “appropriating” them, instead you educate more people about it and again, it warms my heart so much to see how much you’ve introduced Mexican practices like this into your life and enjoy them :) thank you for making such great content!
Wanted to share some tips I've learned for nixtamalizing: You can use washing soda or baking soda made into washing soda to nixtamalize if you don't have access to wood or cal (lime). Also, another way to tell if your solution is high enough ph is if while cooking, the corn gives off a very distinct "corn tortilla" smell. Idk how else to describe it other than your nose will know.
My kitchen looks like your kitchen right now. Abundance everywhere! Bumper crop this year. Pickles are on my agenda today.I have made hominy for years and enjoy your explanation and demonstration. The lye water is good for rotting out stumps, but be sure to keep kids away from it. Sunshine to you and miss Sylvin.
So timely with your video❤😊 You guys really inspired me to grow 3 sisters and share the harvest more. I decided to have a taco party instead of the traditional weekly swedish "Taco Friday" to share the harvest with my family and friends later after the corn is harvested. 😊 Thank you for sharing your journey and life here to inspire us all❤🤗
Thank ypu for this detailed explaination and also the language etymology! I learned a lot. I also learned why I never truely liked the storebought corn tacos... the way the corn becomes almost gelatinous looks so supple and delicious! I will definitely try this out. Thanks as always for your insight and beautiful camera work❤
I love making and eating hominy. I grew up with it and learned the basics in the 1950's. Wood ashes is my favorite way. Note: Never pour the ash water down your drain! I heard a story about a family; I'm assuming a widowed mother. Out of desperation, they stole dry earcorn from a neighbor's corn field and she cooked it and cooked it and it never got soft enough to eat. It made my heart hurt, because if she had known how to make hominy, it would have been edible. If you have corn and some beans, you have a popular dish sold in restaurants by the truck loads!
Dude you're awesome. Really I love your videos because you often have good background information in the things you do and I LOVE learning while doing things that I want especially with food, whether that's growing or cooking food. I really hadn't considered growing corn other than maybe a small patch of Silver Queen which I can never get enough of during the short time it's available, but I'm moving to the tropics and where we're going there are naturalized strains there, and me being a person who loves Tex-Mex I was thinking maybe that corn would work well for making tortillas. I KNOW I can do at least some variation of the 3 sisters there because there's beans and squash that grow there too.
We also love learning while doing things with food so you’re in the right place! And yea, you’ll be able to grow a lot of awesome long-season corn varieties down in the tropics so Three Sisters patches will be a great choice there
Excellent video! Probably the best video I have seen on nixtamalization. I have been watching them, as I have yet to try this process. I now feel like I'm ready. Excellent tip about adding vinegar before putting the water outside. Side note, I like hearing the two of you chatting while you're making the videos.
This is so helpful. I’ve always wondered about the niximalization process. I love that you don’t glamorize the process, really makes me feel like I can do it too. When you do a Q&A, could you do a close-up/ show and tell about that cool white dish you have on your dining table? The one with a pattern of holes on the lid and a handle made of branches or something. It looks really cool, sorry weird request 😅
I really value what I learned here about nixtamalization, and enjoyed seeing those beautiful ears of heirloom corn. You have a very natural way of speaking and presenting information that is a pleasure to listen to. And whoever is doing the camera work really sets up some beautiful shots in nice light. It would be nice to put some ambient sound segments in without music. Man alive- all that cranking of the grinder must be a workout!
I enjoy watching the interesting process of eating natural, homegrown food. It's a lot of work, but I am sure it is very rewarding. Thank you for sharing.
Growing up in Mexico there was this quesadilla and gordita stall really close to my school and the old ladies that owned the stall would make fresh tortillas for every quesadilla or gordita that would get ordered… they had their masa and tortilla press ready and would make them in the moment with a huge comal typical of these stalls in Mexico… hands down they’re the most delicious tortillas in the world when made fresh :)
Also, here in Mexico we say they’re good tortillas when the puff up like a balloon, or get bubbles inside when cooking them. And in some stalls they make HUGE tortillas and I just find these small details so fun from my culture :) so awesome to see you guys enjoy them and teach more people about this
I stumbled upon your video on my searching RU-vid for proper nixtamalising corn and I'm so glad that I found your channel.. Kudos to your for explaining the process in the best way.. I'll surely keep you in my watch list 😊
Some nice looking corn! Im on my second year of a heirloom corn landrase, cant wait to see how they look. Ill be adding more varieties to the mix next year!
This was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. A lot of our corn just got knocked down in a freak thunderstorm last weekend in the seattle-area. We have pretty mild summers and springs here so it takes a little longer for our corn to be ready to harvest. It completely toppled our amaranth (just finished flowering), quinoa, and some of our sorghum. It's sad but at least our potatoes and squash are okay 👍
Oh no! 😮 I’m sorry to hear that. I know how disappointing that is. Maybe try a really sturdy variety of corn like Wapsie Valley or Bloody Butcher? They stand up to crazy storms a bit better than most.
Beautiful video as always! Inspired by you two, I grew my first ever crop of corn this year and have it hanging to dry. Can’t wait to make some tortillas.
I've tried to grow this corn in AZ zone 9B, I'm getting mixed results, heat, poor soil, bugs, but getting closer, In Canada better success, so I'll see how my harvest goes here, love the flavor of this corn meal. I burn wood for charcoal to add to our heavy soil in AZ, I'll try some mesquite ash as I'll let some go to ash in a bucket.
This is great and beautifully photographed! I have bought cal (slaked lime) at the specialty market before, I never knew that I could have used ash instead! Thank you!
In AZ we have a RV Park that has Olives for decorating the roads, we pick there, use lime to suck the bitter out of them, I'll try ask versus the lime on Olives. The local park dwellers ask "Who do you eat those bitter Olives LOL they grow it, we enjoy them.
Absolutely beautiful video, thank you for sharing snippets of your life. Every aspect of what is captured and the act of capturing takes so much effort, it is appreciated. I watch your IG shorts weekly, decided to check out your longer videos, was not disappointed!
I'm soo grateful for this video!! Thanks soo much Jordan for posting it! 😊 I have a type of allergy to corn which cause serious stomach upset amongst other side effects. I wonder if I can do this process and see if I can tolerate corn again. Would be nice as it used to be a staple in my kitchen and growing up. I miss it!
Unfortunately the mill is a little too much for our drill to handle. It doesn’t quite have enough torque so it would just burn the motor out. I’ll just keep burning my arm out for now haha
@@HomegrownHandgathered At least it isn't grinding the corn on a metate, though stone ground has the best texture imo, since the corn meal comes out softer and smoother with no grit, and has a nicer chew.
Looks like Ethan started a channel. Yay! We are a family of 6. 4th generation of raising beef cows in Southern Missouri. So, I did eat tongue as a child. Lol But thanks for the reminder to try it again. 😉 Also, if you have a liver dish I would love to watch it. We are working on our clean eating journey. We have been increasing our garden over the last 6 years. I canned this year for the first time. I was not taught this way of life. Taking slow steps for our family to eat healthier. I'm learning the best things take time. This is hard for my trained type A personality. I think we could eat your whole bowl of dough in a day. Lol I do have dent corn in the garden this year. Should I just buy a grain mill or put my littles to work helping??? Not sure where to start, but I also need it doable or it will never happen. Thank you for your content! I enjoy so much your true love for the garden and your kitchen skills are amazing! Thanks again!!!
Yes, he did! We made a “music video” for one of his songs last week which is basically just a bunch of flowers and pollinators in the garden 🙂 And yea I’d say if you’re grinding corn and other grains for a whole family it would probably be worth it to invest in one of the big electric mills since they work so much faster.
As a Mexican I always wondered what coriander was until I found out it’s the same as cilantro 😂😅😅 I used to think it was a different herb that I just did not know yet haha, pretty awesome to see similarities between cultures, even tho it took me a while to catch on 😅😅
So interesting to learn how to nixtamalize corn with wood ash and while you still had to wash the corn after it was cooked, I'm sure not as muchas if you'd have used a rock of Lime(Cal). Thank you for sharing Jordan and for the cameo of Sylvan enjoying her yummy tacos, tlazoh camati(thanks in náhuatl)👍 and 👋from Querétaro.😋🌽🫓
Interesting side note: Wood ash has the necessary minerals for the formation of glazes on pottery clay in high temperature kilns. You can literally use wood to throw the pots, fire the pots, and glaze the pots. Amazing.
Oh that's good to know! Silvan got me a pottery wheel for my birthday and we're actually going to start playing around with it this week. Do you know if the wood ashes would work for glaze for pit-fired pottery?
@@HomegrownHandgathered for pit-fired, I don’t think it’s possible to reach sufficient temperature. To my knowledge, Pit-Firing is more suited to low-fire earthenware clays with “high” iron contents. There are really good resources out there that can give you more information that’s specific to your area of interest like John Britt and a website called Glazy. John Britt has written several books on glazes and is basically a national authority on the topic.
I turned my hand crank apple peeler and my hand cranked grain mill into battery drill powered machines. A pull of the trigger and the drill does the work for you. Looks like you could chuck a drill onto the shaft and leave the crank off. 😁
Nice! Good luck with that. Our late season corn is just starting to tassel, but the plants are only a few feet tall so I don’t think we’re gonna get any huge ears, but maybe a few
What a lovely video!!! It warms my heart to see you and your wife working so hard for something so simple and so intrinsically linked to my culture. There’s a movement in Mexico to stop American grown gmo corn from coming into the country and save this heirloom species, they have the slogan “Sin maíz no hay país” without corn there’s no country, since it’s been our main staple along with beans for millennia. Thank you for showing us how beautiful and respectful of food this is. I need to find this blue corn seed, where did you get it?
Thank you! And yes, so true. We save our seeds from year to year, but you can get the Hopi Blue corn in this video from the Alliance of Native Seedkeepers. Seedsavers Exchange and Southern Exposure Seeds also have great heirloom flour corns
oh i love your videos, i hope i could have such harvests one day!, in argentina there is a dessert called mazamorra that is made with dry white broken corn that is like a porridge, and the old way of doing it involved the ashes of a bush called jume, thats supposed to be extra alkaline, so i guess it was nixtamalized, dont remember exactly how it was made we also have a dessert made with 1 inch square winter squash chunks, that has to soak in ash water (some people use lime) and then cooked in syrup, my grandma used to make it, but i dont remember if the squash had to only soak in the alkaline water or it had to be cooked in it, but it made it so that didnt end up being a puree but it have some crunch in the outside i should've paid more attention how my grandma cooked
Ohh thanks for the tip on the desserts! They sound a lot like a Navajo corn porridge that has raisins and some sugar, but we’ll have to try the South American version too
I was curious how people nixtamalized corn in antiquity, bc calcium hydroxide is a pretty recent development. Turns out wood ash was the answer. Fascinating.
Yea, most of the high pH processes from the past used wood ashes to get the pH up. The word "alkaline" actually comes from the Arabic "al qili" which means "plant ashes"
The origin of the word hominy is from the Powhatan language of Virginia, which was of the Algonquin language. One group of the Powhatan were the Chickahominy, ( people who grind corn). Nice video, subscribed. I do like cilantro 👍
Super informative! I want to try and grow corn to do this next year. Live in Ireland but from the USA and we import organic masa atm. My stomach aches from the sprayed masa. Would love to do this!
I have been following you for quite some time now. your vids relax me ( thanks Ethan), and I find what you both do fascinating. at the end of this one you mentioned Silvans hours. Are you a nurse? if so , thank you for what you do. also, you should do a vid on how you two met , and what took you down this amazing path of eating off the land. thank you for your channel
So glad to hear that! Passing your message on to Ethan as well. Silvan actually manages an organic farm for her day job, but we second your thanks to all the nurses out there. And we met at a community garden in college 🙂
We were actually just talking about trying that this year! Great minds think alike 😉 Normally we use commercial lye for soap-making, but we’ll definitely make a video if we have success using wood ashes
I was going through your list looking for a video on the manual equipment that you use and sources for them but couldn't find one. I might have missed it. When you get a chance would you please do a video on all the manual equipment you use for various tasks and sources to get them from? Thank you so much. I enjoy your videos. May you walk in beauty always.
Corn silk make a wonderful hot tea as well. You can also use a shucked corn stalk and rub it against a corn you are about to shuck. Makes the process easier. I remember watching my grandma do it this way. Does it matter what type of tree branches you use for wood ash, is there one better than the other?
We had some corn silk tea this morning! As for the wood, hardwood or fruitwood is usually best. I think you want to avoid using any conifers and definitely no treated wood or anything like that.
I want to try growing some corn, chickpeas, and maybe potatoes or squash next year. There’s a big black walnut tree above where I’d grow but it still gets plenty of sun. Would it be helpful all around to leave the leaves it drops this fall where we plan to grow? I’d like to because it’s better for everything, but want to make sure it helps and doesn’t hurt to have a layer of leaves.
I wonder how this would turn out for stuff other than corn. I know dunking bread dough into an alkaline solution is how you get that crispy tangy pretzel crust -- would this work as well with grains? Could I do this to dehull rice and chickpeas? Might have some experimenting to do :)
My crafter heart would be in HEAVEN with all the corn husks! Also, do y'all eat the silk? I love eating it with sweet corn, but with the dried version I've heard you can powder it for a vitamin powder or make a tea with it. I've also seen a couple videos from some students in India that developed a way to dry and grind the actual cobs to make a flour additive/extender. I liked the circularity of you burning the cobs and husks and using that ash!
@@HomegrownHandgathered nah, you couldn't possibly use all of them! Plus, I love the symmetry of the cycle. Grow corn, burn the roughage for the ash to cook it, use the ash water to grow more corn! It's cornception!
@@user-lh8im2vy8e I would do all sorts of little forest creatures or mythical creatures (Thunderbirds, Underwater Panthers and Horned Serpents), you can do all sorts of different designs for wreaths, especially if you braid them, flower blossoms, trees, braid a ton of them into decorative cording... I've got so many ideas but I'm stuck living with my parents right now and my dad doesn't let me keep them because he hates 'junk'.
You need two different temps to make them puff, and only when they puff are they super tender. You start off both sides on a medium temp and then flash cook them in another pan thats on high, it will make them puff
We grew blue Hopi this year for the first time and got a great crop. I dried and ground a bit of it for corn meal to make bread.... After watching this video should I be concerned about pellagra? We eat pretty clean (except the Oreo's I'm consuming while watching the video lol) I have never heard of it. Love your videos, Hubby and I are definitely going to try the deer tongue tacos this fall!
Awesome video, as always! My first thought upon seeing that grinder was that someone should put gears on those things 😆 One question - is there a particular purpose for putting the tortillas in a pot padded with cloth once they're cooked? I've always thought they looked very cosy for baked goods, but can't figure out what else 😅
Yea, gears would definitely make it a bit easier to turn. As for the tortillas, we put them straight into that box to kind of steam a little bit while they cool off. Otherwise they get kind of dry and lose their texture as they cool. The cloth is to absorb any excess moisture so the one on the bottom of the pile doesn’t get soggy. Hope that answers your question.
Thanks for the peaceful, non-distracting music. I find traditional cooking methods intriguing. Who thought this up? I imagine a woman spilling ashes into the pot. Since she didn't have food to waste, she finished cooking in the ashy water and washed it before serving--hopefully, nobody would notice. But then she saw the change in texture, mashed it, and cooked it on a flat surface. Wallah! Tortillas! I'm so glad she spilled ashes in the pot because tortillas have been part of my family's food culture for generations. But not a fan of la lengua.
What spacing do you use for your corn? Most of the corn I grow is for breeding projects so I always grow very close together to encourage competitiveness with weeds. I grew for eating this year and have more than I can eat lol
What do you do for corn earworm? My community garden is right next to a commercial farming operation so I seem to pick up some of their pest pressure since I am relatively pesticide free. My grain corn has been getting decimated by them this year.
Was wondering if the 3 sister's method of growing would be possible in raised garding? With my type of disability the way ya'll gardens isn't possible. I've been thinking of raised corrugated bins?
It would definitely work if the raised beds go all the way to the ground and have natural soil beneath. Corn roots can grow up to 6 feet deep so they need a lot of soil to grow well. If you have the raised beds that are up on a stand and not very deep, the corn might struggle a bit. Beans and squash will do fine in pretty much any type of garden bed.
Hi silly question if you let the lye water sit for a week would all the wood ash fall to the bottom and settle out? Then could you use the clear lye to make soap?
