Dent Corn

Dent corn is a tall annual grass producing large ears packed with kernels that vary from yellow to white, and occasionally red or blue. As the kernels dry, the soft starch at the crown shrinks faster than the hard starch at the sides, leaving a characteristic dent or tooth-shaped dimple at the top of each grain.

The kernels are bigger and softer than the flint types and have a mix of soft and hard starch, which makes them easy to mill. They are sold as whole dried grain, cracked corn, cornmeal, grits, masa after nixtamalisation, and as ground flour. Dent corn is much less sweet than sweet corn and is harvested mature and dry, so it is not usually eaten fresh off the cob.

All maize traces back to teosinte, a wild grass of southern Mexico that was domesticated roughly nine thousand years ago in the Balsas River region. Indigenous farmers selected larger ears and softer kernels over generations, and different races emerged across the Americas.

Dent corn as a distinct type developed in the United States in the nineteenth century, when farmers crossed Southern dent races from Mexico with Northern flint corns grown by Native American communities of the Northeast, producing high-yielding hybrids that were easy to harvest and mill. The name indentata is Latin for toothed or notched, and the English word dent comes from the same sense, an indentation. The word maize comes from Taino mahiz.

After Columbus, maize moved around the world and became a staple in Africa, Europe and Asia. In the United States, Corn Belt farmers of the nineteenth century developed dent varieties such as Reid's Yellow Dent, which gave strong yields in the fertile Midwestern soils, and agricultural shows and breeding contests encouraged a rapid improvement of the type.

The twentieth century brought hybrid corn, developed from inbred lines crossed to produce vigorous seed, and dent corn became the genetic base for nearly all of it. Mechanised harvest, nitrogen fertiliser and large grain markets turned dent corn into one of the major crops of the world, grown on an enormous scale in the United States, China, Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine.

Because dent corn was so closely tied to industrial uses, it is often called field corn. Most of it is fed to livestock or processed into starch, sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup, vegetable oil and ethanol fuel. Yet it also has a long culinary history, as the source of cornmeal for cornbread, grits, polenta in some areas and the masa used for tortillas and tamales. Heirloom dent varieties have been revived by small mills and growers for their flavour.

Most dent corn is used as livestock feed, in ethanol production and in processing for starch, sweeteners and oil. For people, it is dried and ground into cornmeal, flour and grits, or treated with lime in the traditional nixtamalisation process to make masa for tortillas, tamales and pozole, which improves flavour and nutrition.

Heirloom dents and coloured types, such as blue and red varieties, are milled for artisan cornbread, polenta-style porridges and breakfast cereal. Cracked corn feeds poultry and wildlife, and the stalks are used as silage and bedding. Whole dried kernels are also used for popcorn-like roasted snacks in some regions, though true popcorn comes from a different type.

Whole-grain cornmeal supplies carbohydrate, fibre, some protein and minerals, and yellow types contain carotenoids such as lutein and zeaxanthin. Traditional nixtamalisation releases bound niacin, which helps prevent pellagra, a deficiency disease that appeared in communities that ate untreated maize as a staple. Corn protein is low in lysine and tryptophan, so diets based heavily on maize need other protein sources such as beans.

Refined corn products have less fibre than whole-grain forms. Corn is naturally gluten-free.