My great grandfather sometimes did a parched corn breakfast when camping. He'd throw the corn into the embers when banking the fire for the night. by the time dawn hit most of the embers were ash (or very close to it) and he would sift the corn out, pound it with a rock and blend it with a bit of water and any berries we had found the night before. This mash would be thick and fried up in his ever present cast iron skillet to something of a thick flatbread. It was a lot tastier than it sounds. Oh, and we used the corn classified as 'feed corn' which we grew for the farm livestock. It wasn't very appetizing cooked in modern methods very starchy and bland but it was lovely parched. He often left some of the larger coal bits in when he pounded the corn - he said the charcoal was 1. good for us and 2 would handle any impurities in the water that the heat didn't kill. I wouldn't trust this method with today's water contamination but it was fun as a kid. On long excursions we'd also use a floating filter in our canteens - a muslin pouch filled with pounded cat-tail stem fibers and charcoal. Each day you'd fish the pouch out with its string open it up and wash the cat-tail fibers and muslin free of he used charcoal then squeeze it out, dry by the fire during breakfast and then stuff fresh charcoal into the pouch, plunk it in your freshly filled skin or canteen. to drink you'd tug its string so it would 'block' the mouthpiece (usually we just tied them to the caps so remove the cap and it pulls the filter into position) then sip. the water passes through the three stage filtration pretty well and even earthy water pours out fairly clear. Generally the cat-tail fibers needed replacing every 2 weeks or so.
Our Japanese friend told us how at the monistary she grew up in (her father was a monk) they would use a hunk of pure charcoal to purify a pitcher of drinking water as a filter.. your grandfather taught you well... the secret of Brita filters and of the Big Berkey water filters... layers of charcoal
An anthropologist studying the remains of native people in the Yucatan peninsula when looking at their teeth commented that people who ate a lot of stone-ground corn also ate a certain amount of corn-ground stone.
I've heard the same about many early breads from the BC era. The milling process would mix in tiny rock fragments and your average person in ancient history who subsisted on this bread would have ground their teeth down to a near unusable state if they reached late adulthood. Most Egyptian mummies are found to show damage to their teeth from this. It must have been very painful.
Good thing they had a lot of coco plants, cocaine is just the thing to numb the gum and tooth enough that made puling not so bad, I imagine they also had chocolate, another good reason to make cocaine.
@@denofearthundertheeverlast5138 Chewing the leaves the cocaine plant comes from gives you a caffeine-like sensation at best. There's a reason the active ingredient needs to be distilled to such an artificially-purified state to make you high.
I always wonder how many preppers are here for post-grid collapse tips, especially for any vid with "survival" in the title! :-) No worries, just wondering. I'm still working on pemmican.
I've been following since day 1 of Townsend videos, and it's so great to see how the confidence, enthusiasm, and passion of the Townsend crew has finally broken through that unsure arctic ice of "I don't know if this is a good idea" and has become that bright, undaunted spirit, of "Heck, yeah! We can do this!" that we know today. Keep on keepin' on, Team Townsend!
Two years later and I think he's transcended to "Let's be the best darn reenactment channel on RU-vid". He's the perfect blend of accessible and documented, in my opinion.
When a friend and I visited Peru in the late '80s, we stayed with a Quechua family high up in the Andes. They would throw whole cobs of dried native corn into the side of the fire. After cooling, they would remove the parched corn from the cob and put it in a small bag. The next day on the trail, our two guides would just eat that corn as they walked along. They gave us some and it was quite a nice snack. Tasted very much like Corn Nuts.
The sand method has been used to make puffed rice in South/Southeast Asia for a very long time. Bonus is that no threshing or milling of the grain is required; the hull separates in the cooking process. There's no trace of sand in the end product.
But still what do you expect? "Ey we ain't got a pan over here what should be do it now?" - "who needs a pan anyway, throw it into the the fireplace and pick it out later"
Parched corn for me is to eat it as is. Pick through and get the cracked one and eat it like a snack. Grind up the uncracked, add enough water to make patty and ash cake it. Nutty, crunchy, smokey, and a little bit sweet. Do not eat in large amounts the corn will drink everything you do. I have made a Cream of Wheat style gritsy thing by boiling ground parched corn til thick and it was OK but I prefer real grits. Steel or iron skillet a must and if you do it inside you get to check your smoke alarms.
WOW! Great presentation! Thank you for all your research! Out here at Monterey State Historic Park, we teach the 4th graders about the importance of corn in "Alta California" and how it was introduced by the Spanish (1770). With a population of mostly Hispanic, it's blows my mind that none of them know how corn is prepared for making the all important "flatbread" called a tortilla. The children grind the soaked corn with a "mano" (large oval shaped rock) on a matate (sloped grinding stone structure). They gather that up and form a matsa ball which is placed, then between a dampened piece of "recycled" linen and flattened in a small, wooden, hand press. They turn that over to us presenters for cooking on the brazier. Once cooked, they spread the butter that other classes made the day before in a churn. To see their eyes light up is worth far more than any amount of pay, especially since I'm volunteering. Thanks to this episode, I have a greater overall knowledge about corn and now have a wrath of info for my Civil War camp.
I'm struck by how similar this is to tsampa, the roasted barley flour that is a staple food in Tibet and the Himalayas. Tsampa is made by roasting barley grains in a large metal pan, then grinding it. It's sometimes made into a porridge, but is most commonly eating by mixing with water or butter tea into a doughy consistency and formed into little balls that are eaten directly. Like the corn you describe here, tsampa is high-energy, stores well, and is very light and quick to prepare when you're traveling. It was and remains popular across Tibetan and related societies, but is especially useful for nomads. In the traditional agricultural system, farmers grew barley for tsampa and traded with nomads who produced meat and dairy (including a light, dense dried cheese) from yak and other animals in a mutually beneficial relationship.
@@MythicGirl2210 Yeah, I thought that too, though it's probably from Harvest Moon 2 on the Gameboy Color. Sucks that the devs of the old "Harvest Moon" type games are now being called "Story of Seasons" games due to copyright bs from Natsume that holds the "Harvest Moon" license and are bad.
For those like me who have heard of nixtamalization but not hominy, apparently hominy corn is basically corn that has been nixtamalized, i.e. soaked in an alkali solution such as lye, wood ash or preferably hydrated lime. Which frees niacin, adds calcium if lime is used, frees iron and other minerals for the body and improves amino balance by removing zein protein. It also removes quite a lot of the poisonous aflatoxins which can arise from mold in the corn, and these poisons can cause liver cancer, particularly when combined with hepatitis or other liver irritation. Hominy or nixtamalized corn meal also will make a dough when mixed with water, whereas un-nixtamalized corn will not. Nixtamalization or lack of it and related technologies the Amerinds employed, such as eating beans with corn, is important to understand many historical occurrences, right up into the 20th century. Even fairly recent African famines where corn was grown or provided but wasn't nixtamalized because no one knew to and neither did they know to also eat beans with the corn, which balances the amino acids in the diet. Maize is deficient in some and beans other ones. These two practices and the lack of them explains why even though Indians can live well on corn and beans (and squash, for vitamin C, and folate etc.), often with very little else, whereas people new to these crops often suffered from diseases such as scurvy, (vitamin C deficiency), pellagra (niacin deficiency), kwashiorkor (famine belly, caused by inadequate amino acids/protein intake) or even starved to death.
Thank you for this! I was wondering how nixtamalization played into this. I was thinking if that process was done at all, it would have to be done before the browning and drying of the corn. Your comment is so helpful!
I would also suggest covering Nixtamalization when talking about Parched corn as it was also used by Native Americans. It adds more nutrition to the corn. As a matter of fact the Indians of the west coast and and canada would take the rehydrated corn and place in a warm not hot pan or clay pot and slowly cook this corn till it was dried out and you could then eat it like a candy. they would also add salt to it.
BanZandar I have freeze dried whole kernel corn, and it tastes like candy. However, I have not found a good way to store it because vacuum sealing doesn’t work. The kernel holds its shape, so not all air can be removed.
Back in India we still use sand to cook the corn for popcorn, puffed rice, peanuts and chickpea to roast the same method as you are using with the sand. It taste amazing. Thanks for your all videos, they are very interesting.
You put it through sieve that is with little big holes compared to flour sieve. This will ensure to get rid of the sand or salt and you will have clean popcorn.
What do you think about just using salt? Seems like it works just as well, with the added bonuses of no sand grit stuck in popped kernals and self-flavoring.
This is by far the corniest episode of this series you have produced. Your knowledge of the subject is amaizeing. I found myself completely parched by the end.
Jon, a solution for you re parching corn directly on the coals...from The Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Natural history, Vol. XV, Part II, article by Gilbert L. Wilson, The Horse and the Dog in Hidatsa Culture, testimony of Wolf-Chief: "I also parched two of the ears of corn I had brought. I made a little bed of coals, laid the ears of corn upon it, and rolled them around until they were parched corn." Also by the same author, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, testimony of Buffalo Bird Woman: "We parched the whole ears, sometimes, of ripe soft white and soft yellow corn. We had many squash spits piled up in the rear of the lodge behind the beds; these made excellent roasting sticks. The ear was stuck on the end of the stick and held over the coals. "Parching ripe corn on the ear was a winter custom; but boys herding horses in the summer also parched whole ears sometimes for their midday lunch."
It's very sweet that some people still have this reverence for corn in America. When talking about it, you really show your appreciation for it, since it was the building block of your society and sometimes the only barrier between your people and utter hunger. My family in the Baltics still has this same reverence for beets and potatos. Its very easy to forget about the great importance of your local crop nowadays, with supermarkets filled with all manner of different foods, but I think its very important to still remember the role your native crop played in your local history. How many of my ancestors were saved during the great famines by a bunch of potatos and beets? Probably as much as yours were delivered from the hungry death by some parched corn and whatnot. May the fields of our lands always grow fat!
@@stevej71393 indeed! And sometimes these are very cool little ideas we shouldn't have forgotten! Like, by pure chance I learned that sometimes, when normal vegetables weren't available due to poor harvest for example, people in my country made pork stew with sweet apples instead of potatos and carrots like usually. So I tried making this dish and at least for my palette, it was pretty awesome! Now I know what I'll do when my garden fills with borderline inedible sour apples like it does every year. Instead of making compost I'm gonna fry them with some chicken or pork lol!
A few other things that were done with the corn plant itself historically (and possibly in the 18th century) were adding corn pollen to soups, pressing the pith within the stalks and reducing the juice into syrup, dry kernels were roasted as a coffee substitute, the husks were brewed into a diuretic tea, and young corn silk (the female flower) was eaten as a fresh vegetable. One thing done today, that again might have been done then as well (though I am not sure) is using the dried cobs as a smoking "wood" for meats, imparting a toasty and sweet aroma.
My Grandmother had what looked like a castiron can on a rotissorie rod. She could put her corn in that and turn it over the fire until well roasted(parched). She did it once for me and let me turn it. It was fun and after ground into cornmeal she made cornmeal cracklin bread that was to die for.
In the boy scouts we had access to un harvested field corn. We cooked over the fire in a pot, until it was almost totally dried and puffed a bit. Good stuff, Almost like the modern commercial corn nut. Excellent video as always.
Backwoodsman magazine, Grit Magazine, and Backwoodshome magazines all had excellent articles on making parched corn. You had your fire waayy too hot. You are basically just toasting, browning your corn slowly to drive out what moisture there is. You burnt almost all your corn you had. Charcoal's good for the system and all but even that much would give me a stomach ache. BUT I am totally loving the idea of popping the corn using salt. You could even do this in home made clay pots instead of metal kettles if you were in the wild. A good way to pop or winnow any wild grains or seeds you might fine. That being said parched corn is an awesome food. If you had to you can pound it up, add it to some water and drink it where it swells in your tummy, making you feel full with less.
The last thing you mentioned sounds like uncooked polenta. Try cooking it with some spices, it's a lot more tasty and might fill you up even more. A lot of Italian immigrants made it through the Great Depression with polenta, and as someone with a pretty big appetite I felt like there was a brick in my stomach after eating a full plate of it.
I was burning brush and some old weeds one time, and what looked exactly like tiny popcorn kernels started popping out. They were a fifth the size of regular popcorn. And the plant that it came from did not have Cobbs. I tasted some, tasted like popcorn haven't found that stuff in a long time
I shall remember this episode when my family criticizes me for chewing on the "old maid" unpopped kernels on our movie night. I'm not cheap, I'm doing historical re-creation! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The sand-cooked corn might be edible right away. I'd just avoid chewing it to preserve your teeth. Some sand in your stomach won't be any problem, after all.
When you think about it, even grinding corn on the big grinding stones that many natives used would have left little bits of rock, essentially sand, in the grain so it's not much different. In fact we know it happened a lot because anthropologists can see the damage on teeth from it.
True and I would never recommend it for a long-term food source, but I doubt doing it once or twice for an experiment like this would make too much difference.
lonewolf209, I was gonna say nay to this method, but you make a great point,....my grandma had a metate, a big heavy stone slab, carved out of black rock(basalt or some other volcanic rock?) and she had the handle(don't remember its name), well the metates brought brand new were bumpy, with little holes and grooves in their surface area, but considering my grandma's age when she married gramps 22 years up onto the moment she quit cooking, may she rip, 81 years of age that's 59 years of grinding, it is no longer filled with holes or grooves, its almost as smooth as a baby's skin!
I once made some by dehydrating hominy that I soaked it salt water and then deep fried. Very close to the real thing, but it's easier and cheaper to just buy a bag of Corn Nuts.
Mister Hat yeah but in Canada, when you pay $2 ($1.50 US) for maybe 20 corn kernels... making your own is definitely beneficial, if you are actually using it for nutrition and not just a fun little snack.
Brings back memories. I'm an eastern tribe, my grandmother would spend days preparing corn to the right consistency. Once her stash of corn had been processed she would store to make different foods. She was a master of her craft
In addition to removing the husk and changing the flavor making hominy (posole) the process of soaking in lye releases a lot of nutrients vastly improving the food value.
Kristin Wright Mainly it frees up the bound form of Niacin in corn so it can be used by the human body. The mexican way of using slaked lime also introduces calcium.
Kristin Wright It is a protein source just as much as bread is. It just doesnt supply amino acids of all types in the correct amounts of each needed if you were to get most of your caloric intake from grains. Thats why historically corn plus beans was a major food staple combo all over the world. ref. the 3 sisters of some native american tribes : corn/beans/squash.
Lye in hominy making also makes the niacin bioavailable for humans to absorb. With out altering the corn the niacin is not able to be absorbed, which is why many ppl used to get pellagra from niacin deficiency when the had a largely corn based diet.
I heard alot of early settlers got really sick trying to survive on corn instead of wheat, because they didnt know you had to soak it in lye before making it into bread (like tortillas)
@@mariabyrne7222 Or made from wood ash, either or - but yes, sodium or potassium hydroxide caustic lye. In the case of Hominy corn, you can use slaked lime directly. using lime actually "fortifies" the corn with a bit of calcium.
How utterly delightfully surprising! It's only this wonderful channel that could surprise with long forgotten ways. Incredibly satisfying to see recreated.
Nixtamalization involves using ash to remove the outer skin of the corn. This makes the B vitamins bioavailable. I have long wondered how the Native Peoples figured this out. But I think I get it now. This is a fantastic episode. Thanks for the meat free series. Can't get enough!
That sand method is a fairly common way to make puffed rice, too. Here's a video showing that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FHfuNuBftrA.html
If I may offer a suggestion: when cooking with ashes, be sure to bury what you're cooking. This minimizes the oxygen that gets to the food, and prevents it from burning. I've done this many times with roasted acorns and nuts, and I suspect it would work equally well with corn kernels. On the flip-side, I'm now curious if your sand technique will work with the acorns... Alternatively, leave fresh corn inside the husk, and the leaves will retain the moisture, making a roasted (rather than parched) corn on the cob. This technique can be used for almost anything, and a wrapping of fresh leaves (a weave of cattail reeds, to use an American example) is something that has been used worldwide by various folk, to cook everything from meat and fish to succulent fruits without getting (much) ash in your food. Also, thanks for mentioning hominy. I had never heard of it, as grits and the like aren't overly common up here in Canada (though I've eaten my share of tortillas). Lye always struck me as something one would want to keep away from foodstuffs, and my reaction is rather like if you had suggested soaking my corn in bleach - but this appears to be a common and desirable thing! Colour me astounded! Once again, your videos are broadening my horizons and encouraging me to research new materials.
First Maize not Maze. Native Americans used ash of specific plants to make the lye to produce hominy. Processing it this way helped avoid pellagra caused by lack of niacin.
It's maize in the modern spelling, yes, but in the time period he is talking about spelling was less standardized. In fact, the particular pamphlet he is talking about spells it mayz. books.google.com/books?id=wWUUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA306&lpg=PA306&dq=benjamin+franklin+the+sand+is+separated+by+a+wire+sieve&source=bl&ots=QZLsB6xAUr&sig=cUAkEsFMOGa291UdrLO-TA7KMVA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7yJbz5qfUAhXHOiYKHaZjBWYQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=benjamin%20franklin%20the%20sand%20is%20separated%20by%20a%20wire%20sieve&f=false
They used the ash of hardwood trees. There are a couple of ways to do it. One is to take a box with a hole in the bottom, line it with small rocks, then dry grass on top of that, you then add the ashes ontop of the grass. You will need several inches of ashes. Pour water on top and let it drain through the ashes catching it in a pot under the box. Boil the collected lye water to evaporate about 1/2 of it. When you put an egg in it, the egg should float with about a quarter sized area above the water line. Cook the corn in the lye water. You want 1/2" of lye water above the corn. Boil it for 1 hour then set it and allow to cool overnight. The next morning you drain the lye water off and wash the corn vigorously. You want to wash it tell the water remains clear. If you grind it wet it makes masa dough, id you dry it and grind it you have grits. Dry it will keep for ever in a cool dry place and can be added to soups and other dishes. That same lye extraction method was used up to the 1900's and the lye water was used for making hominy, soap, sometimes in biscuits, and for cleaning. The only bit of that puzzle I dont know is what that box was called. lol I have done it with a plastic bucket and drilled holes. I have made hominy this way many times.
I always get a kick out of you people hat correct folks about calling it corn instead o maize, or in your case, maize spelled wrong. There were over 600 Native American languages when the whites got here, I'm sure has had hundreds of names besides maize.
It did have many names, but the word "maize" comes from the Spanish word that comes from Taino, since the Spanish first encountered the plant in the Caribbean.
In regard to the first method, from my coffee roasting experience you get more even heating by using a deeper skillet and larger batch sizes that trap the heat, rather than just a single layer like in the video. Also, stir slowly but constantly to prevent charring.
Jon, there is more info in Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden about parching corn in sand as Franklin described: "We sometimes parched hard yellow corn in a clay pot of our own make, with sand. Down on the sand bars by the Missouri we found clean, pure sand; if I wanted to parch hard yellow, I put a handful of this sand in my clay pot. "The pot I now set on the coals of the fire place until the sand within was red hot. With a piece of old tent skin to protect my hand, I drew the pot a little way from the coals and dropped a double handful of corn within. I stirred the corn back and forth over the sand with a little stick. "When I thought the corn was quite heated through, I put the pot back on the coals again, still stirring the corn with the stick. Very soon all the kernels cracked open with a sharp crackling noise; they burst open much as you say white man's popcorn does."
Hi, I do living history and combat re-enactment, and your channel is awesome! Just wondering, as my period is dark age Norse Viking period, do you know if it’s possibly to do this with barley or wheat? Vikings didn’t really have access to corn in that period if at all...
When I heard that method, I didn't think, "this isn't gonna work," because I watch Good Eats. :p Boy oh boy, though, the salt method is a huge upgrade.
Excellent video. I remember my grandpa showing us kids the old way to make a basic corn meal to make mush. Starred as you have shown, then grind the corn between stones, sift and add to water with salt to make mush. Top with molasses and eat. Also, my grandma, and many others, used a corn drier to dehydrate the corn. The drying takes about 24 hours over heat. This dried corn can be stored for a very long time without going bad, at least 10 years, if stored properly. To use it, rehydrate in water over night or longer like you would beans. My grandma prepared it like creamed corn. I have my great grandmothers drier and every few years make dried corn for use over the next few years.
Aha! Toasting the corn and then grinding it ya say? This reminds me of a staple of my people which we call 'pinole'(pronounced: pee-no-lay), toasted the corn, then ground up on a stone metate, with the aid of a stone handle, it was then saved away in a deerskin pouch, basket or clay pot and taken by war and hunting parties, also by pochteca(traders), when dusk arrived the people would bring out the pinole, put it in a claypot, add water and they'd have a quick and yummy porridge to drink with their camp meal. Later on with the introduction of cinnamon and sugar, the pinole make would mix in sugar, maybe cinnamon and you'd have an instant candy.
I love parched corn. My granny and her brothers used to make and eat it when we would visit them in WVa. My great uncle would just salt the cooked kernels and eat them. So yummy.
Fun fact! Back in the 18 hundreds you would store your corn in a hole in the ground. It was considered bad luck for blue eyed people to retrieve said corn. Many a day the town crier could be heard yelling. "BROWN EYE TO THE CORNHOLE!"
Parched corn is very popular among the Dine' (Navajo) to this day. When I worked vendor routes (I was 'Breadman', then the 'Water Guy') on the 'Rez'I often bought bags of parched corn from roadside vendors or was given handfulls by clients.
Our family made parched corn from dried sweet corn. We let a couple rows of sweet corn stay on the stalks until totally dry. This corn looked very wrinkled & useless for eating. Husked & plunked the cobs in clean feed or burlap bags, tied shut with string, & stored over winter hung in the attic from a rafter. An old milk pan with a hole in the middle was strung thru, upside down. If any mice were clever enough to find a way down the string, they could not find purchase on the pan & fell to the floor. We'd shuck a couple of quart canning jars full at a time for the pantry. Parch as usual. This corn blows out very round, but won't pop open. Method was passed thru many generations from my German kin, who settled in PA & fought with the Continental Army. Don't know where it started. WAY more tender than using fully ripe & hard flint or dent corn, and can be eaten out of hand. Probably not so good for grinding into meal, as it's much lighter, but we never tried, Probably be delicious with a bit added to pone, samp, or spoon bread. If you make a recipe of peanut brittle ("forgetting" to add the peanuts) add a like amount of the parched corn at the LAST minute with a shake of fine salt. YUM! We always threw a handful or two of this corn in any popper with ordinary popcorn. I loved the stuff & Sis hated it, so we each got what we liked.
Hi! First of all I do want to say how much I enjoy your videos and how much time and effort you put into them. I've learned so much from watching them. However I would like to point out that wording it that the people indigenous to the Americas "only used simply clay pots that they fashioned themselves" perpetuates the idea that Native culture is lesser and not complex, when the very opposite is true. We were the ones who cultivated corn as a crop over thousands of years. As a Haudenosaunee woman I take great pride in my culture, traditional foods, and peoples' history and also, frankly, how great we were at using materials found in nature. It's just a clay pot, not a "simple clay pot". And even if we had some cooking devices other than pottery, we still would have "fashioned" them "ourselves". Thank you for making these video, but please do try to think of your wording when talking about the peoples native to this land. Thanks!
By parching the corn in the ashes, and not washing them afterwards (which would ruin the point of parching them, to get them as dry as possible), some small traces of ash will remain, however neatly you shake or sift out the coals and ashes. This means that when you grind it up & mix it with water, the lye in the ashes leaches out and mixes with the corn, which is a form of nixtamalization, changing the molecules & freeing up the proteins and vitamins essential for full caloric & nutritional value. Eating corn without nixtamalizing it means you'll eventually suffer from pellagra, a lack of vitamin B3, aka niacin. But by treating it with slaked lime or leached ashes (twice as much ash to powdered slaked lime is the substituton ratio), you free up those nutrients. I suspect the most nutritional parching method, if the corn hasn't been pre-nixtamalized & turned into dried hominy first (a better, more guaranteed process, but which takes much more effort), is to just parch the kernels in the ashes of the fire, and not blow off too many ashes. (Definitely pick out the chunks of wood and charcoal, though, don't skip that step, lol!)
this corn looks burned... no wonder using the just coals method, but using a pan - I wonder if you can avoid that. maybe you can cover this in a q&a: how did people regulate temperature using a pan on a fire? did they use some kind of spacer? ps: thx for all the great content!
I have a patch of popcorn and indian corn growing in hills instead of rows out back.... Some of the hills, six seeds a hill, are both pop and indian corn, to cross pollinate.... I have fun growing both varieties in the old way (using hills)...
My grandmother parched cob dried sweet corn by the bushels. Try to winnow out the loose stuff after you shell it. We ate loads of it, but it can be hard on the stomach if you don't chew it thoroughly and drink water. We used a tablespoon of bacon fat in the skillet to help even out the heat. Didn't hurt the flavor either. Use low heat and stop before it turns bronze. It will keep cooking a long after you take it out of the skillet. I've left it in my hunting pack from one year to the next and didn't notice too much degradation in the flavor.
Very interesting episode Jon. Was there similiar methods of preserving other grains - like wheat or rye? In my country's bygone days, part of wheat or rye that was meant to be stored only for consumption was sometimes roasted to prevent germination. It wasn't widespread though - because viable grain that could be sown and produce more was almost always preferable.
I use to parch corn when I was in my late teens and through my 20s. I would use flour dent and it would puff up to 3 or 4 times it's previous size. I did it on the grill setting the frying pan on the coals. I would eat it hiking, hunting and fishing.
The sand method of cooking is very popular in Western India and a very old one. Its often used to toast peanuts , it it breaks down the starches, brings out the oils and removes the moisture too giving it a look, texture and flavour that no other method of cooking peanuts can match, and hey no additional resources needed. p.s. and yes it is also used to pop millet , which gives a crunchier but smaller pop-corn. The sand used is coarse with all the fines removes, and the the corn is then vigorously strained out from the sand through a sieve.
The way I parch corn is to par-boil sweet corn (green field corn will do). This sets the sugars. Then you can cut the kernels off the cob and sun dry them. I prefer to dry the kernels on the cob, then shell and winnow them. The end product can be re-hydrated in boiling water (tastes like fresh corn on the cob), or eaten dry as a confection.
This is a popular snack in Zimbabwe where maize is the staple food. Generally seasoned with just salt, Modern varieties sold in shops have chilli powder and other spices
As a kid in Ohio in the 60s my parents would soak the unhusked corn in water during the day and in the evening throw the whole corn husk and all on the fire to cook for about 45 minutes and than we'd eat, it was good.
The thorough preparation and history never cease to amaze me in your videos. Thank you for all your time and hard work. I love corn and I’m going to try one or more of these methods. Will get back to you with results! I love learning and I can’t wait to view your videos. Not many like you on RU-vid. IMHO. ❤️👏🏻
I never knew there were so many different kinds of corn. Every time I watch one of your videos I learn something new. Thanks for making such wonderful and informative videos.
Fascinating! Popcorn is my favorite food ever and I actually enjoy corn 🌽 any wat it comes!! But not the sandy corn, no thank you. This was very interesting.
