Humintas

What on earth is an huminta, you ask? It’s easier to show than explain…

First, you separate the corn from the husk – cutting off the bottom of the cob so that the leaves peel off intact.

Then you cut the corn off the cob, grind it, and add cinnamon, sugar, salt, oil, and anise seed

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Then you overlap two leaves and add a small slice of cheese. Once you’ve folded the leaves over and tied the little bundle shut, all that’s left is cooking the humintas.

To prepare the pan, place some of the used cobs in the bottom of the pan and lay extra leaves on top of them (to prevent the bottom humintas from burning on the bottom of the pot). Place the tied humintas on top of the leaves, stacking them on top of each other. When all of the humintas are in the pan, place a layer of leaves on top of them. Add boiling water so the pan is about 1/3 full, cover, and let cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Got that?

The jovenes (college students) at our church decided we needed to learn how to make humintas and so last Monday they all came over. We didn’t realize the process would take so long… though it only took an hour or so to get the humintas in the pan, it took a lot longer to cook them! But since Monday was a holiday, we enjoyed the time together.

I know you've seen pictures that look just like this before, but this is from Monday. They just can't get enough of it!

Of course, we didn’t just make humintas. Lots of Dutch Blitz was played, a movie was watched, and Caleb was loved on.

Just in case you want to try your hand at humintas, here are the proportions we used:

25 ears of corn (makes about 4-5 quarts of ground corn)
1/2 – 1 cup sugar (or to taste)
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 Tbsp anise seed
1 Tbsp salt (or to taste)
2 Tbsp oil
cheese