Indian Corn

[crockett]

Some folks hang dried "Indian Corn" with multi-colored kernels- on their doors during the fall, as a decoration. You aren't supposed to eat the stuff so I figure they must have sprayed it with some type of chemical. In any event I was thinking about planting some kernels and seeing if it would grow and if so, if the corn is edible and how it would taste. I'm thinking maybe the multi-colored is more historically correct but I have no idea.

 

[tiswell]

I have planted a variety called Zea Mays for several years. There are some ears that are mostly yellow with some blue and red kernels, and some ears with all dark red kernels and some with with a blend of the two. I have never eaten it in the milky stage like sweet corn. I just pulled it all last week and some ears still had kernels that weren't dry, so I husked it and brought it inside to finish drying. I can't speak about what might be sprayed on the stuff sold for ornamental display.

I have tried parching it in its dry state and it is very hard to crunch with your teeth. Soaking it in water overnight, draining and parching in the morning makes it easier to crunch into. It make a very good cornmeal. I am sure there are better ways, but I just through a couple hand fulls in the blender and pulse it until it looks good enough. It is much more fragrant and flavor full than the typical store brand yellow cornmeal. I would encourage to give planting some a try. Also, check out something called ground cherries. I planted them for the first time this year and they are pretty good!
Blessings, Tiswell

 

[Ken Cormier]

Hope this thread goes father have wondered about this for years. Thanks for posting.

 

[coloradoclyde]

I have some growing in my garden. I was going to use it in a beer, but the OP's questions got me curious. so its research time. http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/everything-about-indian-corn.htm

I have grown my own popcorn for decades.

 

[Sean Gadhar]

I planted about 35-40 stocks of Cherokee white eagle corn to parch. We are having a vary wet year for us, so I think I'll pick it all this weekend & hang it in the shed to dry. I'll try to post a photo or two.

P.S. It is a blue corn, the " white eagle" part is just the white of where it attaches to the cob. http://www.planetnatural.com/product/corn-cherokee-white-eagle/

 

[tiswell]

I should have added that Indian type corn is known as flint corn. The majority of other varieties are dent corn. When flint corn kernels are dry, the tops of the kernels are rounded. Dent corn, as you might guess dries with a small dent at the top. There is something about the starches being different that causes this. I got my seed from Baker Creek Seed. They have a website and offer some really cool stuff. Last year, I tried this corn in a three sisters configuration and planted them with some of their Kamo Kamo squash/pumpkins and Trail of Tears Beans and it worked out pretty well. FYI, Those New Zealand Kamo Kamo's are really good. You can just microwave them and scoop out the flesh and eat. They have a great taste very similar to pumpkin pie filling but I did not add sugar or spices. This sounds a little like vegan speak but I eat my weight in venison and beef every year.

This year I planted the corn in rows rather than hills to save time. The stalks grew to about 10 feet tall which put the cobs at eye level or slightly above and the deer decided they were more trouble than they were worth. It also might be that the sugar content is lower and not as much of a temptation. The squirrels got into them as always, but I am currently getting my revenge with the fowler. That's about all that comes to mind

Good luck with your corn!

 

[crockett]

So popcorn is a type of flint corn? Most dried corn seems wrinkled or dented. I'm thinking maybe the dent or wrinkled corn is best for parching.
I think I'll go ahead and try growing some "Indian" corn next year. I'm wondering what type of beans were actually used in succotash, the store stuff with lima beans doesn't seem right.
I was thinking boiled Indian corn, historically correct beans, onions? and venison- might be a good thing to cook up.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

You need to find an heirloom variety of popping corn, as often what is offered by the seed companies is a hybrid, made to hold more moisture for a better pop. True popping corn expands a lot less than modern versions.

Not all dent corn is edible...some of the feed corn out there is dent variety, but with a lot more cellulous than humans can digest. Parches well, but has a laxative effect. :shocked2:

The ornamental corn that you find for sale often has been shellac'd, and it has been bread for color variety in the ears, vs. eating, with only a small number of "odd" color kernels. It will work just fine for eating (if it's not shellac'd), but it might take a couple of years of selective planting to get the ears back to that state if you started with seeds from an ornamental ear. It might not grow at all, as it may have been set in an oven at 170 degrees for several hours to kill off insect eggs, which would kill off the living corn cells in the kernels too.

I wonder if you got the variety back to mostly yellow with some odd color kernels that it wouldn't parch up softer? Maybe the reason for Pinole and Rock-a-hominy is that some varieties don't parch well even if heirloom?

They say, for example, that "blue" corn was once basic flint, but that the Indians selected blue kernels for replanting, and after several seasons got mostly blue kernels...they liked the taste better maybe?


LD

 

[tenngun]

Hard flint corn and blue and red-purpil varieties do have a stronger 'corn' flavor. This won't be of help to Alden as he suffers from a horrible case of cornaphobia. They make a killer cornbread or corn mush, great for hasty pudding. We can never know what historic food tasted like before bred to unifomaty. I wonder that the old cornmeal from a hard corn would be closer to the food of the old days. Decorator corn is ...shall we say, rich in fiber. The only thing that would make it unedable is the shallck If you grow your own it is edable and rich in flavor...too high in fiber to be good for nutrition.

 

[coloradoclyde]

You need to find an heirloom variety of popping corn,

Not quite sure what you mean by this LD but I have been growing popcorn for 2 decades and all I do is go to the grocery store and buy popcorn that you buy to eat and plant it. It works great for me.
The same can be done with dry beans and lentils in the soup isle.
Also have you ever popped sorghum? Very small but tasty, I eat it with a spoon.

 

[sidelock]

Tell me more about this. Never heard of popin lasis cane.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Not really much to tell.
Sorghum seeds just treat them like regular popcorn. They pop up really small(too small to pick up with my big fingers so I use a spoon) and you don’t break your teeth on the old maids.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

a bit off topic but sorghum cane tops seem to be well liked by farm animals as well as squacks and deer. I suppose it's the sugar content.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Not quite sure what you mean by this LD but I have been growing popcorn for 2 decades and all I do is go to the grocery store and buy popcorn that you buy to eat and plant it. It works great for me.

I meant if you are looking for the original product.

You can plant and grow Roma-cherry tomatoes from seeds each year, or plant red-delicious or granny-smith apple seeds, get a tree, and get apples, but those varieties didn't exist in America until the cartridge gun era.

In 1951 Orville Redenbacher and Charles Bowman began testing tens of thousands of hybrid strains of popcorn before settling on a hybrid they named "RedBow." A marketing expert advised them to use "Orville Redenbacher" as the brand name, and it was launched in 1970. So it may grow fine, but if you used it for the colonial breakfast of popcorn and milk... it's a bit of a dissapointment compared to heirloom variety.

There are two types of dried corn sold for making "cancha", or parched-corn, but the larger of the two is very South American, and is what they use for "corn nuts" and isn't a variety that was known in North American, East of the Mississippi. Since it's only dried, I bet it would grow too.

LD

 

[zimmerstutzen]

It has been many years, (1994) since I toured the Knife River Indian village in ND. I remember a local farmer telling me that it was too short a growing season to grow corn, and the guide at the historic site telling me that the Souix had at least 7 different varieties of corn for different purposes, including popcorn, some having a seed to harvest time of only 50 days. As I recall, of the two or three varieties that were on display, supposed to have been grown from seed found on site. (The Souix had a way of underground dry storage below the floors of their shelters. ) some varieties were dent and some not.

 

[tenngun]

I love to do old food recipies, but I remember reading in Tennyhills 'food in history' about the taste of food in the past. Not only are animals heavly breed in to different animals but almost none our veggies and fruit remain the same. Even going as far as comparing spices that we can buy just a few weeks old, to those back then that spent years in the belly of a leaky ship, stored in barrels that had been used for something else on the voyge out.

 

[Rod Lassey]

It has been many years, (1994) since I toured the Knife River Indian village in ND. I remember a local farmer telling me that it was too short a growing season to grow corn, and the guide at the historic site telling me that the Souix had at least 7 different varieties of corn for different purposes, including popcorn, some having a seed to harvest time of only 50 days. As I recall, of the two or three varieties that were on display, supposed to have been grown from seed found on site. (The Souix had a way of underground dry storage below the floors of their shelters. ) some varieties were dent and some not.

At least one of the varieties of corn, Hidatsa red, was grown from seed found in a cache pit, along with a Hidatsa variety of squash. I grow 15 varieties of Nothern Plains corn, Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, and Dakota, along with 3 types of squash, and 2 types of tobacco (Hidatsa,nicotiana quadrivalvis; and Crow, nicotiana miltivalvis). Also pumpkins, melons, and a couple types of sunflower. The seeds are out there, and available, but it takes a bit of searching, and some research as to what's appropriate for your area. As a side note, Indians were pretty meticulous about keeping the varieties straight, and avoiding cross pollination. The wildly multi-colored stuff sold as "Indian corn" is usually rather mixed.

Rod

 

[Alden]

Rod;
Cool that you maintain those like that. Have pics of different varieties or do they all have different seasons so aren't exactly around at the same time?

 

[Rod Lassey]

I tend to grow one or two varieties a year, widely spaced to avoid cross pollination. I don't have any photos, it's never really occurred to me to take some, I guess I should. I store my seed in jars, in a cool, dry, and dark environment.

Various parks, like Knife River Indian Villages here in North Dakota are good sources, as are the heirloom seed exchanges. Some universities have programs preserving heirloom seeds, for instance the Traditional Native American Tobacco Seed Bank, run by Joe Winter through the University of New Mexico.

Rod

 

[crockett]

Definitely keep a good record of what you are doing. You ought to write up a magazine article on it for Muzzle loader, etc.