Hominy corn was grown by the Iroquois Indians, here in Canada, as well as the US for more than 1000 years.

In order to get the tough husks off, the corn is lyed. Some people use the commercial lye process but traditionally (and very often nowadays, still) they use hardwood ashes. They put good clean hardwood ashes (making sure nothing was burned but wood in the fire) and mix it with water and soak the kernels for a couple of days. It has to be used soon or frozen because it tends to go “sour” and doesn’t taste good.

With more and more Latinos in many large cities, you can easily get canned white and yellow hominy. The white is always more tender.

When you go to PowWows (traditional Indian festivals) all over Canada and the US, you can almost always find Corn soup which is sometimes a thick meat soup and sometimes thin, with white hominy corn and red or white kidney beans. Its smokey flavour is unbeatable!

I make the thick type, myself, using pork hocks (pig ankles), a piece of salt pork well soaked to remove a lot of the salt, beans, Indian rice (and sometimes white rice), onions, garlic, and hominy corn. A piece of fry-bread or bannock, or “scone” (a thick doughy bread baked in an iron skillet in the oven) and you have a hearty winter meal guaranteed to warm you up!

Hominy corn is also used to make Bean bread (sometimes called corn bread but it is more beans than corn — this is not at all like the American baked bread made with ground yellow corn). A mixture of red and white kidney beans and hominy is steamed and then cut in slices and can be toasted or fried and eaten with soup. You can also eat it sweet with butter and maple syrup on top… Mmmmm….

The process of adding milk, sugar and grated coconut meat is uniquely a Filipino style though and that is what is locally known as “binatog”.

Hominy is also sometimes fried with spices or added in meat stew.