I have been working on this recipe for a long time now and I have decided to give up. Hominy is just too hard to make at home. I wanted a simple (and safe) method to turn dry field corn into something that would be recognizable to the cooks of over a century ago. I wanted something not just edible but tasty. All made in a modern setting, namely my kitchen.

Hominy is a corn product treated with a strong lye solution to remove the outer hull of the corn kernel. Then it is cooked till tender. At this point it can be served as a side dish, with butter and seasonings. (You can buy this in a can in the canned vegetable section of the grocery, but as I understand it is not very good.) If the hominy is then dried again and ground to a course meal you have that southern specialty called grits.

The problem comes with the use of lye. It is a chemical that is hard to find these days. I had to mail order a 2 pound package of that says both 'food grade' and 'Danger' right on it. But after a little research online I found several recipes that used much safer baking soda. I thought if I could use soda I might have something here.

After over 8 different trial batches on three different days I give up. That's not to say I did not come up with some wonderful hominy, it just was not going to let me simplify the process. And the soda just did not work. At least in my opinion.

I bought the corn at 'The Good Earth' in Broad Ripple. I even tried a more easily accessible ingredient, popcorn. In all my trials the best tasting was the real thing made with full strength lye. Lye is without a doubt something you must handle with utmost care when using, but it did make a good final product. Using either the yellow dent corn or popcorn, it was good. It was also a lot of work. The hulls did not slip off like I thought they would. They just turned into thick sticky gelatinous goo which was hard to get off. So I have decided that hominy is just not in my future. Too much work and use of a dangerous ingredient will leave it in the past for now.

But if you want to try it yourself here is how I did it. Please be careful with the lye!

Place cold water in a large kettle or stock pot and carefully stir in the lye. Bring the water to a boil, add the corn kernels and stir well. Boil gently for 30 minutes, stir and turn off the heat and let sit for another 30 minutes. Drain well and rinse thoroughly. Using fresh water, boil again, drain and rinse. Repeat two more time to remove all traces of the lye. If the kernels are cooked till tender, drain and serve with butter and salt. If they are not yet tender continue to cook a while longer.