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Hominy
1 cup hominy 3 cups boiling water 1 teaspoon salt Wash hominy well, soak over night in 1 qt. cold water; in the morning, drain and cook in boiling salted water for about 3 hours. Fine hominy can be cooked in 1 hour, if allowed to soak in warm water, making sure that the water is kept warm by changing it once or twice, using the last water to boil with. Serves six.
A plain boiled grain dish from a section aimed at building weight and calories back onto convalescents. The whole thing hinges on what "hominy" means, since the word covered several products in this period.
- What hominy is hereThe overnight soak and three-hour boil suggest dried whole hulled corn — the lye- or lime-treated kernels sold today as posole or dried hominy. "Fine hominy" is presumably the same corn broken into small pieces, closer to what is now sold as grits.
- Canned hominy is not a substituteCanned hominy is already fully cooked and needs only heating through. If you use it, skip the soak and the long boil entirely; it will disintegrate.
- Water quantityThree cups of water to one cup of dried corn will not survive three hours of simmering. Keep a kettle going and top up so the grain stays covered; whole hominy typically drinks three to four times its volume.
- Low and slowHold it at a bare simmer with the lid on rather than a rolling boil, which breaks the kernels and scorches the bottom. Stir occasionally, especially with the fine grade, which settles and catches.
- Doneness, not the clockThree hours is a guide. Whole hominy is done when the kernels have burst open and are tender to the tooth all the way through — anywhere from two to four hours depending on age and coarseness. Older dried corn takes longer.
- The warm-water trickThe instruction to change the soaking water once or twice and then boil in the last of it is workable: warm water hydrates faster, and boiling in the final change means whatever has leached into that water is not thrown away. Do not leave grain soaking in warm water on a hot day for more than a few hours.
- ServingSix servings as written, and unseasoned beyond salt. Grain dishes of this kind were commonly eaten with milk, butter or cream, or alongside meat gravy; on its own it is bland.