Locally Sourced Masa (Corn)

For nearly a decade, our team at Pangea Kitchen and 2nd Language Ramen has worked to bring you delicious, new food options with the same foundational premise: no shortcuts. At Sazón y Fuego, our group’s first Latin American restaurant, you can expect the same standard of quality in every dish, which starts with authentic ingredients that are thoughtfully sourced. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Pop Yunker’s Farmstead for our masa program.

At Sazon y Fuego our tortillas are made from locally grown organic corn from Pop Yuncker’s Farmstead. In Mt. Vernon, Indiana. This gives us a beautiful rainbow of colors. We nixtamalize the corn and then grind the cooked corn in house for our masa products. This process takes a full 24 hours prior to service to make sure our products are as fresh as possible.

To make masa from corn, a process called “nixtamalization” is used, where dried corn kernels are soaked in a solution of lime water (calcium hydroxide), which softens the corn and loosens the hulls, allowing them to be easily removed; after soaking, the corn is rinsed thoroughly and then ground into a dough, creating masa

Pop Yunker’s grows several different types of organic, non-GMO corn right here in southern Indiana. Instead of relying on fertilizers and chemicals, they use regenerative farming practices by implementing crop rotations and controlling weeds manually. This enables the plant to extract natural minerals and nutrients from the soil, which produces more flavorful corn! We turn it – blue, yellow, and white corn – into masa, or maize dough, to create our own fresh tortillas here in-house.