You know how sometimes you use a thing for ages, and then one day you actually stop and think, “Wait a minute, what IS this stuff?” That was me with Maseca the other week. I’ve been making tortillas and tamales with it on and off, just grabbing that yellow bag like everyone else. Never gave it a second thought, really.
Then my cousin came over, and we were making some food. He picks up the Maseca bag, looks at it all suspicious-like, and goes, “Man, what do they even put in this? Is it all chemicals?” And honestly? I didn’t have a clue. I just shrugged and said, “It’s corn flour, isn’t it?” But it got me thinking. He had a point. I’m always telling people to read labels, and here I was, using this stuff without really knowing.
So, the very next day, I made it my mission. Pulled out the bag from the pantry. Put my glasses on – because that ingredients list is always printed for ants, you know? – and I actually read it. For real this time.
My big Maseca ingredient investigation
And you know what? It wasn’t some scary, long list of unpronounceable things. Not at all. It was surprisingly simple. Here’s the lowdown of what I found on my bag:
- Corn. Okay, no shocker there. It says “Corn Masa Flour” right on the front. That’s the main event, obviously.
- Then it listed: Lime (Calcium Hydroxide). Sometimes it just says “traces of lime”. This is the key bit, the stuff they use in that whole nixtamalization process.
That was basically the core of it. My bag, like a lot of them, also had a list of added vitamins and minerals. You know, the enrichment stuff. Things like:
- Folic Acid
- Iron
- Zinc
- And those B vitamins: Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin. Standard stuff they add to flours.
So, I called up my cousin. Told him, “Hey, guess what? Maseca isn’t some weird mystery powder.” It’s basically just corn that’s been treated with lime – an old, traditional way to process it, makes it better for tortillas and ups the nutrition a bit. And then they toss in some extra vitamins. Nothing too wild. He was actually surprised. Thought it would be a whole paragraph of chemicals.
It’s funny, sometimes you just assume things. But taking a second to actually look? Cleared that right up. Now I can make my tortillas and feel like I actually know what’s going into them. Still tastes just as good, too.
