# Slaked lime?



## ailsaek (Feb 7, 2007)

Slaked lime, the sort one uses to soak corn to make masa (although I am finding in my reading that it has a ton of other uses) - where do I buy it? And if the answer is "at a Spanish grocery," can anyone suggest me the right keywords to use for a search so I can find one? I've tried all the obvious strings ("spanish grocery ma" "mexican grocery ma" "spanish market ma" etc.) and I'm having no luck. I know they're out there, I've seen them on various drives (although darned if I can remember where now), but driving around randomly in hopes of finding a Spanish grocery seems a bit inefficient and more than a little wasteful of gas.


----------



## Shirley (May 27, 2007)

Try: Ma. Hispanic grocery stores


----------



## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

You can get it at most any place that carries lawn supplies.
It's also called hydrated lime, which is *calcium hydroxide*


----------



## bbbuddy (Jul 29, 2002)

You can also buy Mrs. Wages Pickling lime from Walmart etc...at least you know it's food grade. They also sell it by the case online: http://mrswages.stores.yahoo.net/mrswagpiclim.html


----------



## NoClue (Jan 22, 2007)

Lime is lime (as long as it isn't a 'lime' in this case). Lye will also work (with precautions - Hydrated Lime is Calcium Hydroxide, Lye is Potassium Hydroxide), as will wood ashes (I believe this was originally used).

Looking for a mexican market, search for 'mercado' or 'bodega'


----------



## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

NoClue said:


> ....Lye is Potassium Hydroxide....


Lye is sodium hydroxide.


----------



## NoClue (Jan 22, 2007)

I stand corrected. Potassium Hydroxide is potash. It would still do the job.


----------



## jlxian (Feb 14, 2005)

My grandfather made a living out of slaking lime when he was a young man. That was in the early 1900s. Now I wish I knew how he did it!


----------



## Guest (Apr 24, 2008)

Pickling lime is what you want. Available from many places that sell canning supplies.

If it's masa/hominy that you want it can be done with slaked lime or quicklime, wood ashes, lye, or baking soda.

If you want the masa flavor it has to be some form of lime. If you want hominy flavor then lye, wood ashes, or baking soda.

.....Alan.


----------



## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

A.T. Hagan said:


> Pickling lime is what you want. Available from many places that sell canning supplies.
> 
> If it's masa/hominy that you want it can be done with slaked lime or quicklime, wood ashes, lye, or baking soda.
> 
> ...


Baking soda isn't in the same category as the other compounds suggested. Baking soda is a carbonate whereas the other materials are oxides and hydroxides. Baking soda has a pH in the low 8s. All the other materials will have a pH of 11.5 to 12.5.


----------



## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

If it comes down to wanting hominy after TEO, it'd be using wood ashes exclusively... as it'd be the one resource I'd never run out of... (as long as I'm not a refugee)...


----------



## Guest (Apr 25, 2008)

Cabin Fever said:


> Baking soda isn't in the same category as the other compounds suggested. Baking soda is a carbonate whereas the other materials are oxides and hydroxides. Baking soda has a pH in the low 8s. All the other materials will have a pH of 11.5 to 12.5.


 What you say is true, but it can still be used to make hominy and many have. In fact there's a recipe for making hominy with baking soda in my Joy of Cooking.

.....Alan.


----------



## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

Well, I know nothing about making hominy or masa....just a little about chemistry...enough to make me dangerous if you catch my drift. 

Now why any one would want to soak corn in wood ashes, lye, slaked lime, or baking soda is beyond me. I'll take mine with some butter, salt and pepper, please.

Come to think of it, I do like that cod that is soaked in lye.....


----------



## ailsaek (Feb 7, 2007)

Cabin Fever said:


> Well, I know nothing about making hominy or masa....just a little about chemistry...enough to make me dangerous if you catch my drift.
> 
> Now why any one would want to soak corn in wood ashes, lye, slaked lime, or baking soda is beyond me. I'll take mine with some butter, salt and pepper, please.
> 
> Come to think of it, I do like that cod that is soaked in lye.....


It does something for the vitamin content, makes some things more accessible. That's for dried corn, anyway. Sweet corn, fresh from the stalk, steamed with butter is a wonderful thing. I don't even salt mine, and I barely cook it. :icecream:


----------



## Guest (Apr 25, 2008)

Cabin Fever said:


> Well, I know nothing about making hominy or masa....just a little about chemistry...enough to make me dangerous if you catch my drift.
> 
> Now why any one would want to soak corn in wood ashes, lye, slaked lime, or baking soda is beyond me. I'll take mine with some butter, salt and pepper, please.
> 
> Come to think of it, I do like that cod that is soaked in lye.....


Well, there's several reasons for doing it that way.

The first is that once the hull comes off the corn cooks faster and is easier to grind into a meal to make tortillas, arepas, tamales, big or little hominy, or whatever other use they are going to put it to. Corn is a hard grain and if all you have is a hollow stump or two pieces of rock to rub together then anything that makes it easier to process is a good thing.

The second is that most of the niacin in corn is chemically bound up in such a way as to render it unusable to human digestion. Not really here nor there for the average American that _should_ be getting their nutrition from a wide range of foods. It was and still is a very big deal for those folks who consume 80%+ of their daily calories in the form of corn (not fresh sweet corn). Back in the early part of the twentieth century when cotton was still king across the south there were about twenty thousand or so share-croppers who died of pellagra which is a severe niacin deficiency disease. My paternal grandmother had it in fact and had to take special supplements for it. Pellagra is still a serious problem in those parts of the world that now grow corn for the bulk of their diet. We gave them corn to grow, but not the corn culture that went with it.

The third reason is that hulling the corn with an alkali alters its protein content. As you probably know corn contains protein that is nutritionally incomplete for us humans. Too much of one amino acid, not enough of another. By using alkali to hull the corn the excess of one type of protein is eliminated so that what is left is more fully complete. Again neither really here nor there for anyone able to eat a modern diet, but for the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans and many of the lesser indigenous American cultures corn was at times very nearly all that they ate. Sort of the way the poorest Irish in the eighteenth century ate nearly nothing but potatoes.

None of those folks knew anything about proteins, niacin, amino acids, or anything like that, but they could use their powers of observation to realize that the ones who ate alkali hulled corn had less of certain kinds of problems than the ones who didnât. The rest would follow naturally.

Lutefisk, on the other hand, is simply beyond the pailâ¦

â¦..Alan.


----------



## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

Well there ya go, I learned something today. Thank you!


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

ailsaek said:


> Slaked lime


Slaked lime is a hydrous paste of calcium hydroxide [Ca(OH)2]. It's made by slowly mixing water with calcium oxide (powdered limestone) in a manner that avoids creating lumps. The process of slaking lime is somewhat analogous to making a lump-free flour paste in the kitchen while preparing gravy, which your wife might call a "rue".

Slaked lime is commonly used as a flocculant to clarify water, although I could argue that it works more as a coagulant than a flocculant. Diluted purified lime suspensions also remove hair from the body, as in Nair. There are countless other industrial uses for slaked lime.


----------



## KanakaNui (Oct 6, 2004)

Ask for cal viva or oxido de calcio. Oxido de calcio should be understood by most spanish speakers, I've only heard Mexicans use cal viva.


----------

