Around midnight every weekday, a group of five men and women arrive at the door of Sobre Masa’s dark restaurant in Brooklyn to perform the sacred art of transformation. Hundreds of pounds of heirloom corn, which comes in shades of blue, yellow, and red, is boiled and soaked in an alkaline solution for hours. This is a process called nixtamalization. It is then rinsed, ground, aerated, and the final masa dough is passed through a machine that cuts and griddles it into perfect tortillas. By about 8 a.m., workers will have made about 1,000 pounds of masa and hundreds of tortillas. The tortillas smell like popcorn and taste earthy and ancient.
The tortillas you buy at the grocery store or your favorite Mexican restaurant likely won’t inspire the same level of spiritual awakening. Optimized for cost and convenience, the average tortilla smells more like cardboard than corn, and is designed to encase delicious fillings rather than focus on flavor. But a group of chefs, restaurants and businesses are hoping to change this and usher in a wave of masa made from single-origin heirloom corn that will restore the sacredness of Mexican food stalwarts like tortillas and tamales. There is.
The first time I ate a tortilla and was shocked was when I was in Guatemala. At a street corner stall on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a woman was playing a small, fluffy blue disc on a komal. She sold me a thick bundle, still burnt, wrapped in a black plastic bag. Eating this was like tasting artisanal sourdough for the first time when all I’d ever had was Wonder Bread. Tortillas were a big part of my diet growing up in Southern California. It was something I bought at the grocery store or at my mom’s house. favorite mexican marketand sometimes my great-grandmother made them by hand. But as I walked through the markets of Santiago Atitlán, I realized that I had been missing something all my life.
The inhabitants of present-day Mexico began growing corn. 9000 years ago And thousands of years later, they discovered nixtamalization. The modern word for this alchemy comes from the Nahuatl word. nextri (“Ashes”) and Tamari (“corn dough”). The humble corn undergoes amazing transformations when boiled in alkaline broth physical Chemical changes: The outer shell is broken and the starch becomes gelatinous, which not only makes the grain more palatable and easier to digest, but also changes the structure of the protein. essential nutrients Niacin, calcium, amino acids, etc. are easily absorbed by the body. Nixtamalization transforms corn into a valuable staple food. Some anthropologists argue that this process spurred the rise of great Mesoamerican societies such as the Maya and Aztecs. And when tortillas became mainstream sometime after 300 BC, their portability helped facilitate the growth of complex, mobile empires. The Aztecs believed that tortillas had souls. Some Mayans buried their dead in tortillas. Some believe that the first humans were born from corn dough. From corn, masa. And from Masa, life.
However, making masa the old-fashioned way takes time. So around the turn of the 20th century, enterprising tortilla makers developed a way to make masa behave like flour, dehydrating it, packaging it, and simply adding water to make tortillas. This innovation, called masa harina, ultimately helped popularize tortillas in the United States and around the world, especially by Gourma, the world’s largest manufacturer of corn flour (brand name: Maseca) and tortillas (Mission and Guerrero). contributed to the popularization of tortillas. Also, the taste of most of the tortillas didn’t change at all. Purists argue that further processing removes nutrients. small tortilla maker Filed a fateful antitrust lawsuit against Guruma. Many went out of business.
Gruma’s products are relatively bland and surprisingly useful;multipliedtraditional making tortillas I refused. My great-grandmother was Mexican from Texas, and while I have many fond memories of eating her buñuelos and tamales, I remember almost nothing about her tortillas. My mother couldn’t either. It is probably made from Maseka. At least until recently, for many Americans, tortillas made with commercial corn, and often masa harina, were the only readily available option. On the other hand, the demand for tortillas is It exploded. 1 report valued the U.S. tortilla market at $6.7 billion in 2023. Last year, Gruma’s standalone U.S. net sales were: $3.6 billion.
In fact, the market is so large that artisanal producers are starting to think they can get into it. Sobre Masa (Spanish for “About Masa”) opened in Brooklyn in 2021. In addition to our own restaurants, we currently supply approximately 50 restaurants and are expanding our footprint. small tortillas in the restaurant The operation will take place in a nearby 5,000-square-foot space. The restaurant rotates around 10 varieties of heirloom corn, most of which comes from a Mexico-based wholesaler called Tamoa. “Our goal is to elevate and bring more awareness to ingredients that people don’t necessarily see,” Zach Wangeman, chef-owner of Sobre Masa, told me. Three Sisters Nixtamal in Portland, Oregon sells locally fresh masa and tortillas and ships hominy, corn, and DIY nixtamalization kits nationwide. Adriana Azcarate Ferber, one of the co-founders of Three Sisters, was inspired to start making tortillas because American products simply couldn’t match the quality of the tortillas she grew up eating in Mexico. said. In her words, they lacked the “spirit of the corn.” Her mother brought bags of Mexican tortillas on her visits. “I literally stocked the freezer,” she said.
The breakout star of the artisan masa movement is the macienda. Jorge Gaviria founded the company 10 years ago with the goal of essentially creating a more upscale version of Goya Foods. Masienda started by selling heirloom corn imported from Mexico to restaurants, but Gaviria had to teach his many chef clients how to use the corn. Eventually, Macienda came up with his own heirloom take on masa harina, and his consumer business took off online in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Whole Foods will begin carrying Masienda’s masa harina nationally in 2023, and pre-made frozen tortillas debuted this year, Gaviria said. “In recent years, we’ve seen a trend in customers seeking more authentic Mexican foods and ingredients. It’s no longer just about Tex-Mex,” said Whole Foods spokeswoman Ana María Huertas Buitrago. Macienda’s Masa Harina has seen 73 percent growth this year compared to the same period last year, she said.
in his book tacos usa, Food journalist Gustavo Arellano writes that the tortilla “conveys tradition, race, class, and beauty within its circular borders.” Savoring a tortilla made with heirloom corn means getting a little closer to its ancient roots, but that tradition, at least for now, is primarily made up of economically privileged shoppers at Whole Foods and Mexico. sold to diners in upscale restaurants. Macienda’s masa harina is much more corny than Maseca. At the Mexican grocery store around the corner, Maseca costs 2.2 pounds for $12, compared to 4 pounds for $6. hispanic person income decreases more than almost any other ethnic group in the United States, According to the 2023 census report. Enrique Ochoa, a professor of Latin American studies at California State University, Los Angeles, called the discrepancy “a fundamental contradiction.” Although the Masa Revolution is primarily pricing in the descendants of those who invented it, Ochoa told me that it is also inspiring. Tortillas have come a long way since the days of the Spanish conquistadors, who considered masa an unhealthy food for primitive peoples and imported wheat instead. (Bread wheat also gave birth to flour tortillas.) Mexican food, and tortillas in particular, remain a mainstay of the American diet, despite Washington’s current policy of keeping actual Mexicans out of the country. It has become.
The masa entrepreneurs I interviewed spoke of making masa as a kind of communion and spiritual experience with elders who discovered how to extract incredible flavor and nutritional value from corn. . In search of my own metaphysical experience, I purchased dried blue dent corn and soaked it in calcium hydroxide for nine hours until the thick rind peeled off. My small New York kitchen doesn’t have a molinito to mill the masa or a metatate to grind it by hand, so I settled on a food processor. My extra-large masa became a tamale, a neat little package that filled my apartment with the aroma of corn as it steamed. They weren’t like the tamales I grew up eating, but they were nostalgic nonetheless. It reminds me of a time when my ancestors’ tortillas resembled corn.
