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Want to know how to make cornmeal in a high speed blender?
A very good power blender that can handle dry goods is how to make cornmeal fast, inexpensive and healthy.
The boxes you buy at the grocery store are costly and contain preservatives.
With a such as a Blendtec or Vitamix blender, you can grind regular popcorn and make fresh cornmeal or corn flour, and use for baking such as corn bread, muffins, polenta, tortillas, tamales, or frying.
Remember to minimum cover the blade of your blender, and make up to 2-3 cups at a time. If you make more than a recipe requires and wish to keep, store in a Ziploc bag in the freezer.
Be sure the kernels are dry before grinding them in your high powered blender.
Note: When grinding hard grains, it may pit the BPA free jar interior, resulting in a “fogged” appearance. Blender Babes uses and recommends keeping one jar specifically for dry goods or if you have a Vitamix, consider their dry container and how much you plan to grind dry goods. Cosmetic alternations are not covered under warranty.
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How To Make Cornmeal
Equipment
- 1 High Speed Blender Capable of Grinding
Ingredients
- 1/4 to 2 cups unpopped popcorn preferably organic/NonGMO
Instructions
- Place popcorn in the jar
- For Blendtec: Press the SPEED UP Button to Speed 10 and run for 50 seconds (full cycle)
- All done! Enjoy!! Now take a photo, rate it, and share your accomplishments! 🙂 Tag @BlenderBabes & #BlenderBabes
Nutrition
CORNMEAL HEALTH BENEFITS AND FUN FACTS
Many indigenous people used lime (the mineral, not lemon’s cousin) water in preparation of cornmeal.
This was the tradition of early peoples, who probably had no idea what the many health benefits of doing so entailed.
Cornmeal is packed with many nutrients. This whole grain is a good source of riboflavin, pantothenic acid, folate, niacin, thiamine, and vitamins B-6, E and K.
Cornmeal also contains 18 amino acids and minerals such as iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese and selenium.
Question: would it be easier on the blender if you added the liquids (such as milk or oil) called for in a recipe with the popcorn kernals in the blender? We have just a normal Phillips blender.
Hi Eliajah! No you do not want to add liquids when blending dry goods. If you have a normal blender and not a power blender, I do not recommend blending something as hard as popcorn kernals. It may break your blender. When you’re ready to upgrade I have lots of recommended blenders!
Wow!!! This works so well.
Thanks Babe
You are so welcome Judy! I hope you made something delicious! 🙂 ~ Tarashaun
read about popcorn to corn meal nutrition. It is equivalent to eating
card board…. and has NO NUTRITION. This is written in several internet
sites.
Interesting Russell, I hadn’t heard that before. I still use cornmeal for recipes and it has turned out really well…
Health Benefits of Corn-Based Food
Whole grain cornmeal is a fair source of thiamin and magnesium.
Cornmeal products made from dried corn, such as grits, polenta, and masa flour are also a good source of vitamin B6 and folate.
Great point, John!
Stick to empiracle studies. The internet is full of opinions, and when know what opinions are like (everyone has one). There are also tons of people who consider themselves nutritionist because they watched a few youtube videos and read a blog as well as learned a few buzz-words. As for the actual nutrion of Z. maize…
A.-S. Hager, … E.K. Arendt, in Breadmaking (Second Edition), 2012
Corn
Corn (Zea mays) is the most widely grown crop in the Americas. Corn flour is composed of the endosperm, which generally contains between 75 and 87% starch and 6–8% protein (Shukla and Cheryan, 2001). Zeins, the storage proteins of corn, represent 60% of the proteins and are located in protein bodies (Lending and Larkins, 1989). Since corn is considered a gluten-free cereal, it can be used in the production of gluten-free bread. However, little research is available on the production of breads from maize. This may be due to the distinctive flavour and colour attributes (Arendt and Dal Bello, 2008a). Ács et al.
Can this be ground in a nutri-ninja? I wanted to make homemade corndogs and found the cornmeal I had in my cupboard was out of date.Thanks in advance for a reply.
The Nutri Ninja manual recommended to NOT blend dry goods – however in my testing I did blend rice flour quite easily in their Nutri Ninja blend and go cup just fine – you can see my results and other testing in this ninja vs nutribullet review. Since it did so well with flour I imagine it would do well with cornmeal too. I think the cups and/or blade are replaceable if the blade gets dull over time from grinding dry goods. Homemade corndogs sounds AWESOME and so much healthier! Love that idea! 🙂 HAPPY BLENDING! ~Tarashaun
I’ve been wanting to try this, but my recipe calls for cornmeal MIX which already has some additional ingredients added such as soda, salt and baking powder. Any idea how much of these ingredients should be added per cup of plain cornmeal to make a cornmeal mix?
Thanks!!
3/4 cup regular cornmeal.
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour.
1 tablespoon baking powder.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
XOXO! HAPPY BLENDING!
Thank you! I’ll give it a try!
Just wanted to let you know mine turned out great! Wish I could share my pictures too. I did post them on Instagram. @TenleyGreen Thanks again!
I’ll check it out Tenley! Glad it turned out well! XOXO HAPPY BLENDING!
you recommend soaking the kernels before grinding but you don’t say for how long. do you soak for a few hours or overnight?
Hey Joe I think that was an error. You want your kernels to be dry before grinding. Just be sure to use organic corn so it’s NON-GMO. 🙂 HAPPY BLENDING!
There is no reason to use organic corn. Organic corn uses twice the resources to produce a bushel and is often sprayed with many more chemicals than conventional corn. There is NO evidence from any source that organic corn is superior in safety, nutrition or environmental impact. There isn’t a single case of harm from conventionally grown crops. Anti GMO is anti-science.
Thanks for sharing Travis!
There is actually lots of evidence that organic food is better for you than food that is laced with pesticide residues. And there are a number of studies raising serious questions about the safety of GM foods. And the idea that being opposed to a certain technology makes you some how anti-science is frankly laughable.
Definitely use organic Non GMO corn. 🙂
It necessarily. I’m not anti-gmo. Nor am I pro-gmo. I’m “we need more research on the impacts of GMO. Think of it this way, dogs were bred for specific purposes. As they were selective bred, traits that were bred out were relaxed with health problems. You’re telling me there are zero problems that come from genetically modifying something that nature produced? America is a leader in GMO. And I’m obesity. Coincidence??? Maybe. But I’d like some serious non bias research. I’d far prefer organic over gmo. Maybe I’m anti science. That would be irony seeing as how I have several science degrees ranging from forensic science to physics.
Wow! off to make Polenta NOW
We are going to try blending our corn meal into corn flour in our vitamix tonight. As far as I know, corn flour is just a finer version of corn meal. Can’t imagine life without an amazing blender!
Yay Kari! Isn’t it amazing! Grinding corn meal and corn flour in our blender was one of the first homemade flours we ever tried. Yes you are correct, the longer you blend the finer the grain will get, so your corn meal will make a nice corn flour in a minute or two. Let us know how it worked for you and what you made. 🙂
Just so happen to have some popcorn on hand. Put a 1/4 cup in my Blendtec and it came out perfectly. I also made the rice flour which was great too. Thanks!
Awesome Vandy! Thanks for sharing with our community! You’re reminding us of a jalapeño corn bread recipe we’ve been wanting to test! 🙂 HAPPY BLENDING!
Can this be done with a food processor or blender? Dont have a Vitamix and live on an island in the Philippines. Also, they sell corn here. They grill it, but seems more like field corn. Could I buy that, shuck it, dry a bit, blend and then dry some more?
It needs to be hard to make cornmeal. We’ve never tried this, but don’t think a regular blender or food processor are strong enough to grind. :-/ SORRY!
WOW! Now this is new to me…what a great idea I can only imagine what fresh tastes like!