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Preparation info
  • Makes about

    5 pounds

    .
    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico

By Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral

Published 2019

  • About

Masa is the essence of Mexico. It is the foundation of Mexican cooking. In Oaxaca, a lot of families still make their own nixtamal at home to supply their daily masa consumption. Nixtamal is the process of treating dried corn with an alkaline solution to make it more nutritious. Slaking lime—also known as pickling lime, a naturally occurring mineral compound—has been used for thousands of years for this process. After a night of soaking, the nixtamalized corn is ground and transformed into