Father and daughter returned to their field to assess the tumors’ growth. The father stepped forward into the sea of shimmering florets, plucked an ear of corn from its stalk and squatted to face his daughter. Look, he said. It’s ready.
The lumps had multiplied, infecting the kernels. Some had taken the shape of a baby’s fist, others the head of a gnome or a dinosaur. The skin was silvery white, spotted with grey, its surface soft and cool to the touch. Underneath the thin membrane lived millions of spores of a type of fungus called ustilago maydis, or corn smut. In central Mexico it is known by its Nahuatl name: cuitlacoche, or huitlacoche.
Without the slow death of the corn, there wouldn’t be any huitlacoche for the farmer and his family. He thanked the plant for its sacrifice, cut several ears and put them in a sack to bring home. In the kitchen his daughter’s eyes watered as she chopped a shallot, three cloves of garlic, several leaves of goosefoot or epazote. A frying pan was on the stove, the oil sputtering as he let the ingredients fall in. Corn tortillas were heated on a metal hotplate. He stirred the garlic and onion, then added the chunks of corn smut.
I witnessed this fungal harvest in my childhood while visiting a farm in the western hills of Mexico near Michoacán, where one of my aunts lived. It was late July, the humidity over 80 percent.
Huitlacoche has been a Mexican delicacy since the Aztec empire, often eaten in quesadillas, soups, crepes and salsas, among other uses. Some gourmet chefs describe its flavor as earthy, acidic, bitter and umami. The fungus is often cooked inside epazote leaves, imbuing it with an almost citrusy flavor I cannot resist.
When I moved to Iowa City in the fall of 2023, I expected to find at least a few restaurants, shops and farmers markets offering huitlacoche. After all, roughly a third of the state is covered in cornfields; some must wind up with a smut infection, right?
In the U.S., ustilago maydis is considered a plague. Farmers plant corn hybrids specially bred to resist smut growth, and work to avoid injuries to their plants that would open them to infection. Nitrogen fertilizers and fungicides are also used to prevent common corn diseases like gray leaf spot, common rust and anthracnose. Even organic farms that avoid chemical treatments tend to burn their smut-infected plants to avoid further contagion.
Still, I heard about a venture out of Ames called Eloteshop, dedicated to growing Mexican corn varieties in the Midwest — and huitlacoche. Texcoco, Mexico native Xochitl Fonseca and her husband, David Bonnett of Canberra, Australia, first had the idea in 2021 while living in Minnesota. When they moved to Ames the next year, they brought the concept with them.
“We were excited about the idea of growing huitlacoche,” Fonseca said, “but we also knew it is a very sensitive fungus that must be handled with great care because heat changes its texture.”
The ustilago maydis fungus uses specialized proteins called effectors to manipulate the host’s cellular processes and disarm its defense mechanisms. Deliberately infecting your crop isn’t as easy as rubbing one of the tumor-like galls against another plant. The spores inside the galls, called teleospores, have thick walls for protection to survive the winter. After they have hibernated on the ground, a set of specialized cells called basidia go through meiosis (cell division with only half of the chromosomes) and give way to basidospores. Only these basidospores can spread the fungus.
The galls form during the wet season, which is roughly May to October in both Iowa and Mexico. Most galls reach their peak size, texture and taste in two to three weeks.
Eloteshop’s maiz blanco (a corn breed ideal for soups and tortillas, less sweet than Iowa sweet corn) earned a large Facebook following, with some customers driving for hours to buy their produce at Des Moines’ Downtown Farmers Market and the Marshalltown shop Zamora Fresh, among other spots in central Iowa, the Twin Cities and Illinois. Before long, Eloteshop began selling huitlacoche, too.
“It was only necessary to put up a sign announcing it and several people came to ask,” Fonseca told Little Village. “People knew the word and had fun trying to pronounce it. Others were curious about it, and some came directly to buy it because they had encountered it on trips to Mexico, especially Mexico City.”
Indeed, I first spotted huitlacoche as a child wandering Mexico City’s street markets with my parents. The image was unforgettable: Women behind a stall making tortillas by hand, flipping them on a hotplate. Colorful clay pots filled with all kinds of fillings for quesadillas, including shredded chicken in red sauce, ground beef, mushrooms, squash flower, grasshoppers, huitlacoche and much more.
“Some [customers] were already familiar with huitlacoche and shared with us their enthusiasm for experimenting with it,” Fonseca continued. “They value it not only for its flavor, but also for its history and cultural connection. Seeing how people from different backgrounds came to talk to us with curiosity and excitement was a very gratifying experience.”
Corn smut has been piquing curiosity for more than 500 years, though it hasn’t always been appreciated. The oldest references to the fungus appear in the texts of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, specifically in the Florentine Codex, where it is defined as a corn disease that came from the gods. The Catholic priest — among those sent from Spain in 1519 with the mission of spreading Catholicism in what is now Mexico — described smut as “black, dark, like a tamale, it looks like mud, it appears like mud. In the green corncobs, in the mature corncobs it becomes like ash, it forms ash, it turns into ash.”
In later centuries, especially during the Spanish-ruled period, huitlacoche was defined as a staple food for poor peasants.
According to Mexican chef Cristina Palacio, some French restaurants in Mexico began to use huitlacoche in the mid-20th century as an exotic ingredient to use in crepes — a practice that expanded to tourists and the Mexican upper class, and later to the country as a whole.
Edgar Reynoso, co-owner of El Azul Mexican Market in North Liberty, referred to huitlacoche as “the caviar of the corn.” El Azul is the rare Iowa grocery store/restaurant that carries corn smut, jarred in a chile brine and imported from Mexico. (The label reads “Cuitlacoche” and, in English, “Corn truffle.”) They also sell jars of flor de calabaza or squash blooms, another typical ingredient in Mexican cuisine, as well as preserves of nanche fruit or hogberry.
“We have thought of finding local [huitlacoche] producers to be able to add it to our menu” of food items served hot in the store, co-owner Sara Puffer explained, “but it’s challenging because we want to get it really fresh and it only grows during a very specific season, the wet season.”
Puffer also hopes her kids will soon be adventurous enough to accept a meal featuring the mushroomy protein. “I want to cook it with fried beans,” she said. “I believe it would be a great way to make the beans tastier.”
Of the nine essential amino acids that the human body cannot synthesize on its own, corn is deficient in two: lysine and tryptophan. Because of this, corn is considered an incomplete protein source. Corn smut, however, is rich in lysine and tryptophan.
Apart from its nutritional and cultural value, huitlacoche has a sought-after, if niche, flavor profile. Fonseca said they were approached by an artisanal gourmet salt company, which bought fungi from Eloteshop to process and add as a flavoring in one of their packaged salts.
Last year, in a major loss for central Iowa, Fonseca and Bonnett announced on Facebook they were ending Eloteshop for the time being to embark on a new adventure outside the Midwest. They thanked their loyal customers and said they’d offer help to anyone endeavoring to grow their own maize: “Si desea cultivar elotes en su jardín o a mayor escala, háganoslo saber y haremos lo que podamos para ayudarlo.”
Fonseca told Little Village that running Eloteshop taught them a lot, such as how to use less land while keeping the same yield, how to be more efficient with their harvesting system and the importance of social media to promote their products.
But above all, she said, “through our customers’ personal stories, we understood the deep connection that corn has with our culture.”
A CORNY FACT
In Mexico, corn used to make tortillas goes through an ancient Mesoamerican process called nixtamalization, which softens it and releases niacin (vitamin B3). Maize is cooked and soaked in an alkaline solution, usually lime water, then dried out and ground into a dough called masa. Many U.S. tortilla-makers don’t nixtamalize, leading to a longer shelf life but less nutritional value.
Recipe: Huitlacoche Quesadillas
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons of olive or sunflower oil
- 1 cup chopped white onion
- 1 cup of corn kernels (ideally white, non-sweet)
- 1 pound huitlacoche
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon minced epazote
- 1/2 pound shredded mozzarella, Monterey Jack, or any other cheese that melts
- Corn tortillas
- Salt
Instructions
- On a hot saucepan, add the oil and let it heat. Add the garlic, stir-fry for 1 minute.
- Add the onion, corn kernels and epazote. Mix well.
- Add the huitlacoche and two pinches of salt (or more if needed). Mix well, cook for 1 minute.
- On a large skillet or hot plate, heat tortillas for 50 seconds on each side or until they are soft.
- Add 1/4 cup cheese and 1 tablespoon of the huitlacoche mixture to each tortilla.
- Fold tortillas in half and leave on hotplate until cheese is melted and tortillas are lightly browned.
Have you seen huitlacoche sold in a store, restaurant or farmers market near you? Do you grow it yourself? Little Village would love to know! Email editor@littlevillagemag.com.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s August 2025 issue.
