How to Make Your Own Corn Flour

Corn flour, also known as corn starch in some places, is that magical, powdery substance that contributes crispiness to whatever you put it in.

However, while corn flour is certainly cheap and easy to obtain at the supermarket, you could also just make it yourself! With nothing more than some fresh corn, an oven, or a dehydrator, you can end up with a huge amount of homemade corn flour with very little effort!

How Can I Use My Homemade Corn Flour?

Corn flour has all kinds of incredible uses in the kitchen, from using as dredging for frying to helping to lighten up the texture of breads and doughs. Plus, it doesn’t have any gluten! Try replacing half of the flour in a typical recipe with corn flour and notice just how much it improves the texture!

Corn flour that you’ve made yourself can be used exactly like you would use corn flour from the supermarket.

What Kind Of Special Equipment Do I Need To Make Corn Flour?

Since making corn flour is as simple as blending some dehydrated corn kernels, the only equipment that you really need is an oven capable of maintaining a low temperature, and a blender.

Ingredients

1 cup of corn kernels from three ears of fresh corn

How To Make Homemade Corn Flour

Step 1 – Remove corn kernels from your ear of corn using a sharp knife.

Step 2 – Arrange the corn kernels in a single layer on a sheet tray and place in an oven set to 150 Fahrenheit, or as low as your oven can comfortably go.

Step 3 – Dry your corn in an oven set to 150 Fahrenheit.

Optionally, if you have a dehydrator:

Step 4 – Arrange your corn pieces on a rack in your dehydrator, and set it to “grains and pulses.”

Step 6 – Dry your corn until it is completely brittle to the touch, with no residual moisture remaining.

Step 5 – Transfer your dried corn to a blender, and then blend on low speed until everything has broken down into a powder.

Step 6 – Store your corn flour in a lidded container in a cupboard for up to 1 month.

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Troubleshooting Tips

• One problem with working with fresh ears of corn is that they can tend to get a bit moldy and break down quite quickly if you don’t use them right away. However, this is actually a great recipe to use up slightly too-old ears of corn, as the dehydration process should help to drive off any molding or extra moisture that degrading corn might pick up. So if your corn is a little bit too black in spots and starting to wilt, just peel away and remove anything that looks moldy or damaged and you should be fine.

• Corn kernels can tend to hold on to moisture far beyond the point you would think that they are already dehydrated. If you leave too much moisture in the corn kernels, then they might not blend properly. To avoid this, leave the corn kernels in the oven or dehydrator for a bit longer than you would think is necessary – you need to make sure that they are totally dried before you put them in the blender.

• If you find that, even after blending your corn kernels for what feels like ages, your corn kernels still don’t turn into a perfect powder, and instead have those little flecks of corn, don’t fret. You might just need to blend it on a bit of a higher speed, and then pour the finer corn flour through a sieve to catch those errant flecks of corn that just don’t want to break down.

Nutritional Facts

For the health-conscious out there, here are the nutritional details for ¼ cup of corn flour

Calories: 33

Total Fat: 0.5 grams

Saturated Fat: 0.1 grams

Cholesterol: 0 milligrams

Sodium: 6 milligrams

Total Carbohydrates: 7.3 grams

Dietary Fiber: 1.1 grams

Sugars: 1.3 grams

Protein: 1.3 gram

Potassium: 104 milligrams

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