Suggested uses

Basic prep

Ingredients

Corn masa flour, trace of lime.

Blue corn masa flour has an earthy corn flavor and a hearty, fine to medium texture. Blue corn masa flour is made from ground blue posole, a treated and ready-to-cook blue corn.

Blue corn is still cultivated by Native Americans of the southwest and has significant spiritual importance, representing the Eastern rising sun, the beginning of life, wisdom and understanding. Blue corn is also called "Hopi corn," after the Native American tribe with which it is most closely associated.

Ground posole is used for many products such as cornmeal, corn starch, masa harina and corn flour. It is used primarily to make corn chips, corn bread, tortillas and porridge, but can also be used for crusting fish and chicken, making dumplings, breading vegetables to be fried and baking cakes and cookies.

Cornmeal typically comes in yellow or white form, but this blue cornmeal is an eye-catching variant and has 20 percent more protein than white or yellow corn.

Corn is the most domesticated of all field crops and was the most important cultivated plant in early America. Known globally as maize, corn is the only grain whose origin can be traced to the Americas. Scientists believe that the people of central Mexico developed corn from the indigenous wild grass teosinte at least 7,000 years ago. Corn spread north into the present-day southwestern United States and south as far as Peru.

When Christopher Columbus landed in modern-day Cuba, some of his crew went inland and came across maize being cultivated by Native Americans. It's unclear whether corn was brought back to Europe after Columbus's first or second voyage, but by the early 16th century it was being cultivated on the continent.