Call them Mexican truffles, corn mushrooms or, if you’re a farmer, the much less appealing “corn smut.”
Whatever you call this funky-looking fungus that grows on ears of corn, huitlacoche (pronounced wheat-la-KOH-chay) is a delicious, prized ingredient across Mexico that’s been catching on with gourmet chefs around the world.
In Wyoming it’s much lesser known, though Cowboy State Daily did find one chef who not only knows about corn smut, but has actually used it in her cooking.
That’s Cheyenne chef Petrina Peart, who has made a name for herself across Wyoming and on the national culinary scene with her inventive vegetarian menus, not to mention her near upset win against chef Bobby Flay.
“The flavor profile is very earthy or umami,” Peart told Cowboy State Daily about why corn smut is so prized by people who know about it. “So, it gives off more of a mushroom flavor than it does a corn flavor. And then the texture, you can compare it to like a cooked, mushroom eggplant.”
Peart used the ingredient a couple of times for a pop-up when she lived in Vegas and was in culinary school. She didn’t have a fresh source for it at the time, something she still hopes to find one day soon.
“Physically, it’s eaten savory within, like, a quesadilla or maybe with queso fresco, Oaxaca cheese or something like that,” she said.
Other options she suggested would be in a taco, in a tempura or a fleur de courgette, a French delicacy made by stuffing the bright, trumpet yellow flowers of a squash variety called courgette.
The blossoms may be stuffed with a range of fillings, but seafood, such as crab meat, is common, along with soft cheeses like fresh ricotta, goat cheese or cotija.
“Something like that,” Peart said. “So, you have that kind of light and deep flavor kind of playing along.”
Huitlacoche works well in about anything where one might use a mushroom, Peart said.
Beef Wellington, for example, or other meat dishes, as well as ceviche, salsa or even as a topping for pulled pork.
Nutritional Value Also High
As an edible fungus with distinctive flavor, huitlacoche is prized by gourmands all over the world.
But health nuts might get a kick out of this food, too.
The wrinkled mushroom that takes over and replaces kernels of corn is rich in minerals like magnesium, phosphorus and calcium. It also has vitamins A, B9 and C.
It contains most of the essential amino acids, including lysine, glycine and leucine, as well as Omega 3 and 6 precursors, oleic and linoleic fatty acids.
It has unusually high protein for a mushroom, 4 grams in a 125-gram serving, making it the highest protein known for a shroom, and it packs in some fiber as well.
Some research has suggested the fungus has antioxidant properties that help maintain immunological health, and the National Institutes of Health paper on huitlacoche notes a number of bioactive compounds known to have medicinal properties.
These include coumarin-driven compounds that are anti-inflammatory, and purine-derived compounds that have been shown to have some action against drug-resistant human leukemia cells.
So far, no known toxic effects have been documented for this food, which has been in widespread use for centuries in Mexico.
But like any mushroom, it should probably be well-cooked rather than consumed raw. And allergies are possible, so it’s wise to eat small portions at first, just in case there are any sensitivities.
An Expensive Niche Crop
A small jar of it from Amazon costs $26 and some change, and that’s before shipping.
The jar will take at least a couple weeks to arrive, too, so it’s not a wake up today and make it tonight type of thing.
Unless you can find it in a specialty market somewhere.
“Hispanic markets might have it,” Peart suggested.
She has not seen it on any of her shopping trips.
The times she found huitlacoche for sale were in a Vegas market, when she lived there. It was not a fresh product. It was jarred.
The ingredient can also be bought frozen, next-day air from freshwild.com for $45.90 a pound. The company claims its frozen huitlacoche is “just as tasty as the fresh product,” almost like going to Mexico to buy it from a farm stand. Other online stores list frozen corn smut at nearly $100 a pound.
There is one Wisconsin mushroom farmer who grows it for sale, Mike Jozwik, whose nickname is Mushroom Mike.
According to his website, it took him a decade of research to perfect a process that infects 90% or better of his corn so that he can sell huitlacoche as a fresh product from August through September.
But he doesn’t ship it.
So, to buy fresh huitlacoche, it would take a whirlwind trip to Wisconsin and back again. Or to Mexico, where it’s grown all over the country and sold fresh in any number of farmers markets.
Whether it would make it past customs, though, is questionable.
As an agricultural product, it would have to be declared, and federal laws prohibit bringing many agricultural products into the United States to prevent diseases from catching on in agricultural products. That’s likely to include a fungus that the USDA has probably spent millions trying to prevent.
Growing Huitlacoche In Wyoming Would Be A Challenge
Ask an American corn farmer about corn truffles and you aren’t likely to hear anything good. They would more likely refer to it by its less-appealing nickname "corn smut." To them it’s trash, just like the name sounds.
The fact that American agriculture interests have spent millions of dollars to prevent corn smut would be the first challenge would-be Wyoming huitlacoche growers would face, according to Cheyenne Botanic Gardens horticulturist Jessica Friis.
“People wanting to try and grow corn truffles would want to look for early varieties that are not identified as resistant to corn smut,” she said. “Making small cuts on some of the corn kernels before they develop might make it more likely that the fungus will get established.”
Once the corn smut is growing on some of the corn, a slurry can be made from it that could then be used to inoculate — infect — more ears of corn.
Friis tasted huitlacoche when she was attending college in Utah, and said that it’s considered a delicacy in Mexico, where its cultivation is widespread.
“It’s hard to grow corn in Cheyenne, though,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “And I haven’t personally seen any (huitlacoche) here.”
Ditto Mushroom Man Dan Stewart with High Country Fungus. He doesn’t know of any mushroom growers trying their huitlacoche chances in Wyoming, and he’s never seen or heard of the product here.
Another difficulty to trying to grow huitlacoche in Wyoming is the state's short growing season for crops like corn.
Corn needs warm weather to even germinate at all, and it wants growing temperatures from 77 to 91 degrees in the daytime, and not below 62 at night. It would typically take two to three months for sweet corn to ripen under these conditions, or 90 to 120 days. Wyoming’s growing days range from as few as 20 at higher elevations to maybe 130 in the absolute best-case scenarios.
Friis recommended seeking out early varieties of corn, in addition to heirloom varieties that haven’t been bred to resist the pathogen that causes corn smut.
And, it’s probably not wise to mention to any of your farming neighbors that you’re trying to grow corn smut on purpose.
At least, not until after they have tasted something you’ve made with huitlacoche in it and pronounced it terribly delicious.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
