Cornmeal

Cornmeal is a coarse flour ground from dried maize, less refined than wheat flour and produced in coarse, medium and fine grinds for different culinary uses. Blue cornmeal is milled from whole blue corn kernels and has a naturally sweet taste; steel-ground yellow cornmeal, common in the United States, has most of the husk and germ removed and keeps for about a year, while stone-ground cornmeal retains the hull and germ for more flavor and nutrition but needs refrigeration; white cornmeal, also called mielie-meal, is common in African and Southern American cooking. When corn is soaked in an alkaline solution such as limewater, a process called nixtamalization, the finely ground result becomes masa harina, used for arepas, tamales and tortillas, while boiled cornmeal becomes polenta, especially popular in Italian and Romanian cooking. Cornmeal appears worldwide in porridges, breads, batters and fried-food breading, from breakfast cereals to snack foods across Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe and the Americas.