Alkaline Power: Transforming More than Corn with Lime and Ash

“I’m not a religious person, but it’s the only thing Mexicans are 100 percent sure of. It’s a miracle,” says Chef Katsuji Tanabe, owner of a’Verde in Carey, N.C. “We don’t know who came up with the process.”

The process in question is nixtamalization, the ancient act of cooking dried corn in an alkaline solution and unleashing a complex chemical reaction that unlocks the grain’s...