Lines of corn tortilla chips and tortillas flow with systematic purpose at Raquelitas Tortillas factory in Denver’s River North Art District.
Once the chips have been fried and seasoned, a conveyor belt delivers them into a chute, where 6 pounds are automatically weighed out and dropped into a pink and green Raquelitas box, ready to be shipped out to one of 1,800 wholesale customers.
But not every aspect of the 25,000-square-foot factory’s assembly line comes with its own set of rules. Since the family-owned business started in 1959, Raquelitas has been using an ancient, pre-Columbian process to make its chips and a portion of its tortillas. It’s why the corner of 31st and Larimer streets always smells distinctly like freshly husked corn.
“Usually somebody’s gotta be about 50 or older to remember the smell of traditional nixtamalized corn,” said Raquelitas’ co-owner Rich Schneider. “Even though it’s gone out of fashion, we’ve stuck to it. That’s the heart and soul of our business and what makes us different. It’s an homage to our roots of this business — and of tortillas.”
Nixtamalization is a Mesoamerican technique in which dried corn kernels are soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution. Raquelitas uses slaked lime (no, not the fruit), a form of food-grade calcium hydroxide, like the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. This breaks down the outer shell of the kernel, releasing more nutrients from the corn and making it more digestible. After it’s been washed and rests overnight, the corn is ground up in a “molino,” or a mill, using lava rock stones. Then it’s made into masa flour, before the dough is used for tortillas, chips, pupusas, tamales, etc.
Schneider only entrusts a few of his 40 employees to cook and grind the corn. “It’s such a sensory thing,” Schneider said. “It’s like playing golf in a headwind. There’s no set temperature to cook the corn. Instead, my guys are chewing the kernels to test when the cook is ready. They have a feel for when the ground corn is the right texture.”
Nixtamalization has been a rarity ever since Maseca, the popular brand of mass-produced masa flour, was introduced in 1949 and quite literally nixed the need for nixtamalization.
But as more local chefs explore their Mexican or Central American heritage and steer away from the typical tacos and enchiladas in favor of more regional cooking traditions, the old way of making corn flour is returning. In the next year, three Colorado restaurants with a primary focus on nixtamalization will open — from Michelin-starred chef Michael Diaz de Leon, James Beard-nominated chef Erasmo Casiano and fine-dining entrepreneur Johnny Curiel.
“This is the thing that kept our Indigenous and native people strong and capable, and that’s when I realized that this is one of the most important things developed on this side of the world that needs to be explained through food,” said Casiano, owner of Lucina Eatery and upcoming Xiquita.
Raquelitas has mastered the art form
Schneider said Raquelitas’ nixtamal products make up 40 percent of its sales, including to local customers like Hillstone in Denver’s Country Club neighborhood and Mesa Latin Kitchen in Littleton. And the RiNo factory at 3111 Larimer St. opened up a small storefront last week, where nixtamal corn tortillas are already flying off the shelf.
“The popularity of birria tacos really helped push the need for nixtamal corn tortillas,” Schneider said. “Because the meat is so juicy, it’ll just blow right through a masa flour tortilla.”
Raquelitas goes through 10 to 12,000 pounds of corn a day for its nixtamal products. Schneider said the company works hard to avoid any GMO products, so for the corn tortilla chips, they buy field corn from Nebraska (also known as dent corn), which doesn’t look as pretty as the ears you see in the supermarket, but has a harder skin. But for the nixtamal corn tortillas, they use yellow heirloom corn from Bow & Arrow Farms on Ute Mountain Ute Reservation in southwestern Colorado. “The corn is treated with reverence from the dirt until it’s served at the table,” Schneider said.
The ancient overnight tradition is laborious and requires expensive equipment to produce a mass volume of masa, which is why a typical bag of 24 corn tortillas from the grocery store costs around $2.30, while Raquelitas cost $5.50.
Jaime Velazquez has been with the company for 18 years, but had to work his way up to his role of cooking and grinding the corn in the nixtamalization process. He was taught by Jose Rodriguez, who was with Raquelitas for 40 years before he passed away a couple of years ago. Schneider has a picture at his computer of Rodriguez to remember him.
Nixtamalization has faded as a common practice, largely thanks to masa flours like Maseca. The main differences between a corn tortilla made with masa flour and one made with nixtamal corn are the taste and texture. “It’s like the difference between a whole grain artisan loaf of bread and Wonder white bread,” Schneider said. Nixtamalization keeps the integrity of the corn’s flavor intact throughout, developing a robust, almost nutty taste, while the dehydrated corn used in masa flour is “really quite tasteless,” Schneider said. A nixtamal corn chip or tortilla is also stronger because of the fiber the process extracts.
“You can write a check or, or slam your Visa card to get all the right equipment for nixtamalization, but that doesn’t mean you know the art form,” Schneider said. “It’s a masterpiece that takes years of trial and error.”
Next generation nixtamalization
Denver’s Mexican and Latin American restaurant scene has changed quite a bit over the past decade as some chefs have moved beyond the Tex-Mex-style dishes, like fajitas and flour tortilla burritos, that are popular here. High-end chefs like Casiano are educating diners with traditional customs and dishes that speak more to their heritage.
At Casiano’s restaurant Lucina Eatery & Bar in Park Hill, Casiano already uses nixtamalized masa that he outsources for dishes like tlacoyo cochinita, a masa “boat” with habanero-garlic crema and slow-roasted pork, but the space “is too small for its own molino,” he said.
“After a while, you start to see the same foods being made, especially in the U.S.,” Casiano said. “Because there are some chefs, especially Mexican chefs, starting to make some noise in the culinary scene, they’re able to educate guests. We want to tell a story through our tortillas about this ancient tradition.”
This July, Casiano plans to open his second concept, Xiquita, at 500 E. 19th Ave. in Denver. The menu will be centered around nixtamalization, using native corn varietals from Mexico in almost every dish. Like Raquelitas, he plans to buy corn from Bow & Arrow Farms. Guests will be able to watch the team grind down the corn on the molino and into freshly hand-pressed masa tortillas.
“This is something that’s been passed on from generation to generation,” Casiano said. “This isn’t something that a self-proclaimed chef wrote in a book. There’s no need to modernize the process because it is tried and true. Every restaurant I visited in Mexico, whether it be sit down, casual or a street cart, everyone was pressing their tortillas and cooking them to order, so why can’t we do that?”
Following closely behind Xiquita, chef and Alma Fonda Fina owner Johnny Curiel plans to debut his second concept in Boulder this summer. The restaurant, which hasn’t claimed a name yet, will have a large selection of nixtamal-based dishes on its menu, like tlacoyos (thick corn tortillas), tetelas (triangular masa dough stuffed with a variety of fillings), and corundas (tamales wrapped in corn leaves).
“It’s important to me to show how much more you can do with masa than tortillas,” Curiel said. “I want to continue to share what I know, not for fame, not for money, not for anything like that, but because I truly want people to experience what Mexico is, and move away from just enchiladas and burritos and quesadillas.”
Alma Fonda Fina, which Curiel opened in Denver’s LoHi neighborhood last December, has its own section of masa dishes on its menu, like tacos made with heirloom corn tortillas or the Sope de Costillal (a fried masa base with beef short rib). “We fly in half a ton of heirloom organic corn in from Mexico, and nixtamalize it the night before,” Curiel said. “I’m going through 8 kilos of corn a day, which once nixtamalized makes about 36 or 38 pounds of raw masa, so it’s an extensive labor of love.”
Curiel believes nixtamalization is having a moment in part thanks to the introduction of the Molinito, a tabletop molino mill. Masienda, an heirloom corn company, put the Molinito on the market in 2020 for $1,850, which is relatively affordable compared to $10,000 for a standard mill. “After the molino came out, it made it accessible for people to get back to the basics, no more excuses,” Curiel said.
It took chef Michael Diaz de Leon a year to be happy with his version of nixtamal corn tortillas. When he was working in Mexico City in 2018, he’d make tortillas every day from scratch, grinding and hand-pressing them to order. “When you have that first bite of a real masa tortilla, it’s life-changing,” he said.
He was adamant about getting a molino for BRUTØ and guided the other chefs through the detailed process. “We started making soy sauce from corn instead of rice, making miso with corn, and put it back into the moles for a full circle experience,” he said.
After earning a Michelin star there, he stepped down as executive chef to pursue his first solo project. He’s been hosting pop-ups around the country in preparation, serving masa tortas and tortillas. The Denver restaurant should open next year with masa as a main feature on the menu.
“I really want to highlight and honor that tradition in a very ancestral way,” he said.
Community-focused masa
While masa is finding its way into high-end restaurants in Colorado, Cultura Chocolate wants to make the ancient tradition accessible to the community that is nostalgic for it.
Damaris Ronkanen started the chocolate business in 2014, selling to wholesale customers and at pop-ups, before she opened her first physical factory and cafe at 3742 Morrison Road in 2020.
While the main focus is chocolate bars and pastries, the cafe offers a menu of nixtamalized corn-based drinks, like Champurrado, a hot Mexican chocolate atole made with nixtamalized corn, cacao and ceylon cinnamon. It also sells masa dough at the South Pearl Street Farmers’ Market on the weekends.
“My mom took two buses to get to Mexico City and buy my first nixtamatic machine,” Ronkanen said. “This was always something I knew I wanted to incorporate when we had our own retail space. The first thing I pre-ordered for the store was my Molinito.”
Ronkanen’s goal is to provide a community molino for the Westwood neighborhood, so residents can use Cultura’s masa and grind out their own dough.
As of right now, the chocolate factory has only been able to offer it on an as-needed basis, particularly to the collective of small businesses within the Hecho en Westwood collective, which she started to help boost the community’s economy. But she plans to set up a weekly schedule for neighbors. And the collective is offering youth cooking classes to teach the younger generation how to carry on the ancient tradition.
“Nixtamal masa is super trendy lately, but it only feels accessible in higher-end restaurants,” Ronkanen said. “We want to make it accessible in Westwood, which is predominantly Latino with a lot of Mexican immigrants. It was a very common experience for people growing up in Mexico to nixtamal their corn in their house and grind their corn in a community molino, but Maseca has since taken over the world.”
Originally Published: June 19, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
