In most cases, homeowners and even bakers are baffled over the difference between Masa Harina and corn flour or Masa Harina and cornmeal and wondered whether they could be swapped when it comes to recipes. Though they are interchangeable, there are also some exceptions.
What is Masa Harina?
A Mexican corn flour, Masa Harina is an incredibly soft flour that is either made from dried corn kernels that have been soaked and cooked in lime water or finely ground hominy. When translated from Spanish, the term Masa Harina means dough flour. It is popularly known a traditional flour initially used in historic Mexican dishes such as corn chips, tamales, tortillas, and taco shells.
Masa Harina comes in various types depending on what you will make. White Masa Harina is the most common, which is made from dried white corn. There is also yellow Masa Harina which is plainly dried yellow corn.
When to Use Masa Harina?
Don’t you know that a bag of Masa can go a bit far in your kitchen, aside from pupusas, tamales, and tortillas? Not totally convinced? Check these out! Steamed or fried Masa has a nutty and a bit tangy flavor that comes from corn and alkaline solution.
For Savoring Meals
Arepas, tamale pie, gorditas, and tlacoyos are just some of the recipes you can make with Masa Harina. Arepas are cooked similar to that of tortilla and are sliced and filled with meat, cheese, veggies, or beans. Tamale pie can be served when you are in the mood for tamales.
Common Usage of Masa
For Bread, Drinks, Dessert and Breakfast
Atole is also a good serving especially for people who love the combined sweetness of corn with cinnamon and milk. Atole is a Mexican drink made with thick corn. It is spiced with cinnamon, vanilla, and even chocolate. Make your day or free time more relaxing with a comforting and warming beverage. It is usually served during the Day of the Dead and Las Posadas festivities in the Mexican regions.
If you want last minute bread with an intense and delicious flavor, try the cornbread. Corn cakes are famous as well. Just beat two eggs in a bowl and add a pinch of salt, two teaspoons of baking powder, 2 cups of milk, and enough amount of Masa Harina to make a batter. Then, you’re on the go!
Chilaquiles are another Mexican dish with varying recipes and are made with Masa. Chilaquiles are corn tortillas that are cut into quarters and then fried. It is a traditional Mexican breakfast served with eggs and beans on the side. Families usually use leftover tortillas, salsa, cooked beans, etc., to create chilaquiles for the next day’s breakfast.
These are some of the options wherein you can fully utilize Masa Harina.
Masa Harina will bind the instant you add water to it. That’s because it is created in the dough form and dehydrated to convert into powder for easy packaging.
The Benefits of Masa Harina
Of course, this ingredient will definitely offer you with some benefits you might want to reap, and these are the following:
Gluten-free
Particularly those who have celiac disease, Masa Harina is such an excellent addition to your kitchen counter due to its gluten-free content. This will keep you comfortable and happy all throughout.
Rich in iron
Iron deficiencies mostly target women than men because of their menstrual cycle and blood loss every month. Masa will help you increase your iron intake since it is a good source of iron – about 2.8mg of iron for every cup.
Strengthen the bones
As you age, you determine the importance of calcium in your body to avoid bone breakage and osteoporosis. Fight weakness and bone loss by adding Masa Harina into your diet.
Reduces constipation
Masa is a whole grain flour. Hence, it is packed with fiber. This could eventually help in alleviating constipation.
Is Masa the Same as Cornmeal?
No, it’s not. Masa is different from cornmeal in taste, texture, and processing method. We’ll look at the detailed differences in the coming sections. But here, we’ll talk in detail about how Masa Harina is made.
Masa cannot be made from cornmeal, corn flour, or corn starch. It is directly made of dried corn kernels. You can make it at home if you don’t mind sweating a little.
Buy dried dent corn to make Masa. Dent corn is different from sweet corn we see in the market. But if you can’t find dent corn, use whole grain corn (the next best thing). You also need an alkaline agent like calcium hydroxide. Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime is one of the best calcium hydroxide solutions available.
The first step to Masa is to boil the corn in water and a calcium hydroxide mixture. Let it simmer until the outer skin separates from the corn kernels. Turn off the heat and cover the dish. It has to sit overnight (don’t disturb it).
The next morning, rinse the corn thoroughly a few times. Then grind it into a thick dough. This dough is Masa Harina. You can use it directly to make tortillas. Remember that the dough doesn’t have a long shelf life. Use it in three days (maximum) by storing the dough in the refrigerator. Take a necessary quantity of the dough and bring it to room temperature before preparing tortillas.
What is Cornmeal?
Most of the cornmeal you will find these days is made from either white or yellow dent corn and is ground through steel rollers to give an even texture. It doesn’t usually involve the split up of endosperm, bran, and germ so that you can preserve more of the nutrients contained in the corn.
Apart from adding to particular recipes like pancakes and bread, cornmeal can be cooked as well for making grits or polenta. For those with celiac disease or gluten sensitive, you will find this ingredient beneficial. Not to mention, it is also rich in specific nutrients.
When to Use Cornmeal?
Cornmeal has been used as the foundation for creamy, soft cornbread. However, there are other things you can do with this fantastic ingredient. From breakfast to dessert to dinner, here are a few things to know when the best time to use the cornmeal is.
As a Coating on Some of Your Favorite Foods
Whether you are baking or frying, there are lots of reasons why you should love the very crunchy, crispy cornmeal coating wrapped around the food. You can be able to use it in coating almost any food you want, including pork, chicken, fish, and veggies.
Baking Sweets
Whether you are baking or frying, there are lots of reasons why you should love the very crunchy, crispy cornmeal coating wrapped around the food. You can be able to use it in coating almost any food you want, including pork, chicken, fish, and veggies.
Making Crackers and Pancakes
Are biscuits among your favorite snack food? Or, want to jazz up your pancake to impress your friends or visitors? Not to worry as cornmeal is here to save your day!
Cornmeal pancakes are sure to impress your palate since they have delightful marginal crisp edges, a trace of savory-sweet taste, and a bit of texture. Also when you add cornmeal into the crackers, they will create more crunch and texture.
Preparing Polenta
With just minutes, you can transform simple cornmeal into a meal that is something to make your guests awe! For instance, buttery polenta is an ideal pad for a fried egg with a hearty meat ragu, sautéed greens, or roasted vegetables.
The Benefits of Cornmeal
And for the perks of using cornmeal, consider the following:
A great source of fiber
Cornmeal consists of 9.4g of fiber per 3.5oz serving. That is 25% of the 38g of fiber men need every day, and 38% of the 25g women should include in their day-to-day diets. By having enough amount of fiber in your body, you can minimize the risk of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
Iron
A single cup of cornmeal can give you a 4.2mg of iron. This will help drive your metabolism through activating the enzymes needed for energy production and helps your red blood cells transfer oxygen through your body as well.
Phosphorus
Helps make up the DNA, contribute to bone mineral tissue, and form a cell membrane component.
What is Corn Flour?
Corn flour is dried corn that has been finely pounded into flour. It comes in white and pale yellow color varieties. For you to not get puzzled by other ground products, corn flour is widely used for thickening sauce, liquid food, and fry foods as well as for making cornbread, corn tortillas and other baked goods.
Not only white corn is being used as a thickener, binder, and filler in meat industries, pastry, and cookie, but also pairs well with wheat flour to help reduce gluten for crackers, cakes, pastries, and cookies. Similar to Masa Harina and cornmeal, corn flour has many other popular varieties, too. Harinilla is an example, which is made from blue corn.
When to Use Corn Flour?
Don’t let the corn flour intimidate you in the kitchen. This miracle ingredient will take your cooking to the next level!
Binding Baked Goods
We know how it feels to cut a slice of pie and suddenly watch it fall apart. Good thing, this is not the case anymore when you add corn flour into the mixture. It is because the ingredient acts as a binding agent – makes the juices from your fruit thicken.
Crisping Vegetables and Meats
Try coating the small pieces of chopped shrimp, fish, meat, or cauliflower that will be stir-fried in corn flour to give you a super crispy coating! Share this wonderful method to your friends as well and share a delicious bowl of fried meat or even veggies!
Frying Chicken
Struggle to fry a chicken correctly? Corn flour is your best solution! With a 50-50 split of corn flour and all-purpose flour in your batter, you can quickly achieve those perfectly fried, lovely browned, and audibly crusty chicken. In fact, Japanese and Korean fried chicken tends to use only corn flour. Now is your turn.
Thickening Sauces
Corn flour can provide you with methods to help you solve the problem of runny sauces. One is by stirring equal quantities of cold water and corn flour in a bowl until consistency and smooth of heavy cream. This is ideal if you need a shortcut.
The second one is by whipping the slurry into the broth. Continue to whip until you reach a peppy cook to activate the starch completely.
The Benefits of Corn Flour
Here are the benefits you might get from using corn flour:
Gluten-free
Helps minimize or get rid of the inflammation-causing foods from a diet to prevent disease and improve quality of life.
Good for the digestive system
Corn flour consists of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin which are popularly known as insoluble fibers. This benefit has a significant impact on the overall health of a person.
Have great antioxidants
Eating foods with corn flour contained will help you fight free radical damage afflicted by processed foods and too much exposure to the sun and toxin.
A great amount of protein and lots of fibers
One cup of corn flour bears out up to a third of daily fiber goals and offers a decent amount of protein you need on a regular basis. When following a vegan or similar diet, you will find the protein a bit challenging. This makes the corn flour a great option.
Masa Harina vs. Cornmeal
Now, let’s go to the main point of this article – what makes cornmeal differ from Masa Harina?
Masa Harina is far different from cornmeal because it is much finer with a very distinct taste as a result of the processing methods. It is what makes corn tortilla chips to have a unique taste. Besides, Masa Harina has the consistency of wheat flour, is typically white, and is made from white maize flour preserved with wood-ash lye or lime, whereas cornmeal is like micro couscous and is often yellow.
Difference Between Masa and Cornmeal
Both Masa Harina and cornmeal are made from dented corn, though the processing method is different.
Masa is Mexican corn flour used in many traditional Mexican recipes. Masa Harina can be soft or coarse and comes in three colors- white, yellow, and blue. The white variant is coarse and comes from dried white corn whiskey.
Dried and ground field corn gives you cornmeal. Cornmeal is also available in fine and coarse variants. The yellow coarse variant is used to make Polenta. You can find blue cornmeal made from blue sweet corn. The white cornmeal comes from African and South American corn.
However, steel-ground yellow cornmeal is the most commonly used variant in the US. The husk and germ are pretty much fully removed in steel-ground cornmeal. Stone-ground cornmeal is also available and is more wholesome and nutritious as the husk and germ are not removed.
You can make cornmeal and Masa Harina at home. For the latter, just soak the dried corn in an alkaline solution like Calcium Hydroxide through the night. Grind it into a smooth paste. You’ll have Masa Harina dough. (This dough is dehydrated to create Masa Harina flour).
The main difference between the two is the alkaline agent used to change the texture and flavor of Masa Harina. It gives a unique taste to Masa Harina, which cannot be replicated by simple cornmeal. For Mexican recipes, use Masa Harina to get the authentic taste, unless you are making cornbread.
Masa Harina vs. Corn Flour
How about the Masa Harina vs. corn flour? Can you use them as a similar ingredient?
These two primarily differs on how they are made. Masa is made by soaking corn kernels in wood ash or lime, which results in Hominy. It is now pounded into Masa to use for preparing tamales, tortillas, and others. Conversely, corn flour is made by crushing untreated corn kernels which are used for making cornbread, corn pudding, etc.
Difference Between Masa and Corn Flour
Masa Harina is more popularly known as corn dough. Some people call Masa Harina corn flour, which is incorrect. Corn flour doesn’t contain an alkaline agent like Masa Harina does, and substituting one for the other can affect the final dish.
The process of using an alkaline agent or lime to soak dried corn is called nixtamalization. The lime infuses calcium and niacin into the dried corn. It also loosens the hull from the kernels and softens the corn to make it easy to grind them into a smooth dough. The soaked corn is washed before grinding.
Corn flour also comes from dried corn, but the similarities end here. To make corn flour, the corn kernels are pounded into a fine powder, including the hull, germ, and endosperm. This is similar to how whole wheat flour is made. Corn flour is either white, yellow, or blue, depending on the corn used. It is also extra smooth and versatile compared to Masa Harina.
Corn flour can be used in an array of recipes, as we saw in the previous sections of the article. It adds crispiness to deep-fried food items and enhances the flavor. You can use it as a binder in some recipes (like eggs). That said, corn flour is different from all-purpose flour (which is made using wheat grains) and should not be used as a substitute. The same rule applies to Masa Harina.
In short, corn flour and Masa Harina are two distinct flours with different flavors and processing methods. Even though you may find people using the terms interchangeably, the flours are unique and should not be substituted in recipes.
For example, using corn flour to make tortillas instead of Masa will give you chewy tortillas or easily breakable tortillas. If you want the exact texture and structure of tortillas, you should use only Masa Harina. But, you can use Masa Harina as a substitute for corn flour if necessary. Note that the taste and texture will differ.
Finally, Masa Harina and corn flour are gluten-free, though you need to buy corn flour labeled gluten-free as there might be a risk of cross-contamination. Corn doesn’t have gluten the way wheat does.
Masa Harina is not as readily available as corn flour and costs up to six times more. Masa Harina is mostly used in the Latin American regions and can be found in Mexican stores.
Difference Between Cornmeal and Corn Flour
It’s easy to get confused with similar-sounding ingredients. So, is cornmeal the same as corn flour?
The answer is no.
The common factor between cornmeal and corn flour is that they are made from dried corn. Cornmeal is coarse and is sometimes called polenta. Yellow cornmeal is used for polenta, while white cornmeal is used for grits. Corn flour is a very fine powder and super smooth in texture.
Can finely ground cornmeal be considered corn flour?
It depends on the texture. Many people consider corn flour as a very finely ground version of cornmeal. There should be no grains in the end product to call it corn flour. That’s because finely ground cornmeal is still cornmeal if it has a rough texture. Grind it again into super fine powder to convert cornmeal into corn flour.
Can you substitute cornmeal with corn flour?
No.
The difference in texture will affect the dish. For example, if you use corn flour to make cornmeal bread or muffins, you’ll end up with a denser and cake-like texture. Now, if you have cornmeal but not corn flour, grind it into a super fine powder and use it.
Medium-ground cornmeal is best suitable for cornmeal bread and porridge. Now, if you use corn flour in place of cornmeal to make porridge, you’ll end up with a gooey mess.
Can you use cornmeal instead of corn flour?
You can experiment with cornmeal and corn flour when used for deep frying. For example, if the recipe calls for coating the batter with corn flour before deep frying, you can replace it with finely ground cornmeal. This will bring extra crunch to the fried item.
Just remember that cornmeal takes longer to cook due to its coarse texture. The best way to get a crunchy texture is to mix corn flour and corn meal for coating the batter. The ratio of cornmeal to corn flour is 1: ¾.
Difference Between Corn Flour and Corn Starch
Corn flour and corn starch are synonymous in some regions like the UK. However, the two are different and sold separately in the US.
The primary difference between corn flour and corn starch is the input ingredients. Corn flour is made using whole corn kernels (husk and everything included). Corn starch is made using the starch extract in the corn. Corn starch is thicker and used in smaller quantities (teaspoons or tablespoons). Corn flour is the base ingredient like whole wheat flour and is used in larger quantities (cups).
For smaller quantities, substituting one for another should be fine and not affect the taste or texture of the final dish. However, using corn starch for corn flour to make bread can lead to a different texture (denser and sticky).
Storing the Ingredients at Home
If you want to make the best use of the benefit of your Masa Harina, cornmeal, and corn flour, always make sure to keep them in the refrigerator and are tightly sealed. When stored properly, these incredible recipe ingredients could last for up to 2 years.
Conclusion
So, is it Masa Harina or cornmeal, or Masa Harina or corn flour? Well, that solely depends on what you are going to make or cook, as well as on the availability of ingredients you have in your kitchen counter.
If you’re in a hurry to cook something and you have run out of Masa Harina, or it is simply not available in your local store, then you can make use of the cornmeal or corn flour. Their differences are primarily on how they are made, though their uses do not necessarily go far.
Hope you enjoyed reading the article! Like and share. Have questions you want us to address directly, or want to share some ideas based on your own cooking experience? Don’t hesitate to drop them through comments below!
