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From the Nahuatl nixtli (ashes) and tamalli (dough), nixtamalization is the process of cooking maize grain with water and quicklime. This method makes maize nutrients easier to assimilate, it provides the distinctive color and flavor of our tortillas, and improves the nutritional value of maize for human consumption, adding valuable nutrients such as calcium, riboflavin and niacin. The transformation of maize into dough and then into tortillas —or some other of its innumerable forms— would not be possible without the texture and qualities that nixtamalization confers to it.
In Teotihuacán, casseroles were found to prepare nixtamal dating back to the 4th century of the Christian era, but knowledge of this process has been passed down from generation to generation, keeping it to this day. It is, without a doubt, the most important pre-Hispanic technological invention.
