>>843961The corn needs to finish drying, and placing it in a bin somewhere is a good way to get mold. In the olden days, people would have done things like carefully stacking it in a corn crib. I don’t have a corn crib, so I opted for hanging them. I’m tying them together like one would a ristra, but they don’t hang like chiles on a ristra do.
They do make a nice seasonal decoration that goes well here in the southwest.
If anybody is curious, I make hominy with this stuff and also grind it for corn meal. When I make posole, everybody is amazed at how much better my hominy tastes than the store bought stuff. Part of it is probably the corn, but I also use an old school technique for making the hominy:
Take equal volumes wood ash (or even use more wood ash) and dried corn, and throw them into a large corrosion resistant pot. Cover with water, and then some, and bring to a boil. Turn to a simmer, occasionally stirring. Depending on what kind of wood the ash is from, and how much ash you used, it will need to simmer for 2-5 hours. It is done when the hulls are off or are coming off very easily. From this point, you rinse the hell out of it.
Someday, I’m going to try malting, gristing and fermenting some of it, just to see what I can get.