An experiment of undetermined success

So, I tried an experiment today. Not exactly sure how it worked out. For some time now, I've been wanting to try nixtamalize corn. That's where corn is soaked in lye or lime and made into hominy. An old way of doing this was to soak the corn in water and ashes. Everything says hardwood ashes, but I did find a couple of sources that said that softwood ashes would work, it would just take longer. All I have available to me are softwood ashes.

Today I decided to give it a shot. First I sifted out my ashes. I ended up with a bit over 8 cups (that's how big that measuring cup is).

Then I added an equal amount of corn. I used the Painted Mountain corn that I grew this last summer.

Next I added water. Lots of water.

Then I cooked it. And cooked it, and cooked it, and cooked it. I had to stir very often because all the ashes wanted to sit on the bottom of the pot and turn into concrete. This kept getting thicker and thicker and thicker, as well as the corn expanding. I eventually had to dump everything into a larger pot, my biggest. Added tons more water and things still kept getting thicker and thicker.

I kept testing for the skins on the kernels to come loose. Everything I read said that would happen. Never did, or I didn't recognize it. The kernels got to the point where they were almost mushy, but not. Hard to explain. Anyway, I decided to go ahead and rinse them out and see what happened.

First I rinsed them in the pot. Do this step outside as I can't think that the concrete/ashes would do your pipes any good. When most of the muddy ash was gone I dumped everything into a large colander and kept rinsing. And rinsing, and rinsing, and rinsing. It was a little too cold to be doing that today.

Finally got them clean, I think.

I'm not sure what I ended up with. It doesn't look like any of the pictures I saw or descriptions I read. I've never actually had hominy of any sort before so I can't even compare it to that. I'm going to hope it's edible (as in not toxic) and try doing something with it. Any suggestions?

I think I'll try this again, maybe with some lime. I don't know if the issue is the type of corn, the ashes or the cooking time or something else. I know this works with lime so I may try it again. If I get the same results, then maybe I'll try a different type of corn. Someday I'll figure it out! :D