Anybody ever ground sweetcorn to meal?

[bilmac]

This year I grew some heirloom golden bantam sweetcorn and it was pretty disappointing to eat as sweetcorn after eating all the hybrids for so many years. So since I didn't eat much of it in season, I have a bunch of it drying out in the garden and I am wondering if it would make cornmeal.

I would like to continue to keep the strain for seed, it was highly productive, most stalks had three big ears, even though it was a bad year for corn in this part of the world. If things go really bad and we couldn't get hybrid sweetcorn I could be very happy to have an heirloom. But I don't want to eat it as sweetcorn unless I have to. So maybe I could grind it.

[bilmac]

I guess nobody has done it so I will have to answer my own question. I finally got the corn picked and dried and ground some into cornmeal. I ate some this morning and it ain't good. I thought the sugars in sweet corn turned to starch as it matured, but it seems as if there was no starch in the meal I had this morning. It seemed as if it was all fiber, kind of like eating sawdust. I guess the remainder of my harvest will be chicken feed, the chickens probably won't even do good eating it.

I have been searching the net and am zeroing in on an heirloom field corn called Painted Mountain to try next year. I live at pretty high elevation and this corn is supposed to do well with short seasons and cool temps.

[blind ear]

How about turning it into ethanol fuel.
AKA moonshine.    eddiegjr

[pastorp]

I don't know much about the different kinds of corn but when I was a kid my folks would take the dried corn to the grist mill and have half ground into corn meal & the other half ground for grits. They just called it sweet corn. 

Guess I should a paid more attention growing up.

[The Hermit]

Sorry for missing this post, I used to grow golden Bantam and for a sweet corn its not so sweet and its kinda tuff, chewy. Ma used to say it would be a lot tougher with out it.
A better non hybrid corn is Ashworth.
When I grind sweet corn, I use a cast iron burr grinder. You have to make sure that the corn is very dry as moisture tends to make the corn build up on the burrs. It makes a course corn meal.
If you have lots of corn to do, I use a Black Beauty corn sheller, saves on the hands. Save the cobs for smoking your hams.
For winter wheat, I use a stone mill. It makes a nice flour as does buckwheat.

  The Hermit

[Rustyinfla]

  I've made corn meal from deer feed corn before and it turned out ok. About like the stuff you get at one of those tourist stops where they run a water wheel mill. The one I use is a Corona grain mill and has steel burs but I think I remember reading somewhere that stone burs are available for it.
   If I'm not mistaken the corn usually grown for making meal is refereed to as dent corn. I don't know for sure what the difference is.

[Hit or Miss]

Most field corn is dent corn.  Look at the large end for the dent!

I recently read about grinding popcorn for meal, they reported it to be very good cornbread.