This is corn smut, a culinary valuable type of fungus. It starts life like a yeast sporidia by budding daughter cells until it finds a genetically suitable mating partner. Once it becomes dikaryotic it starts to form the fungal hypha and infects a single kernel forming what you see as a gall.
While deletirious, and often considered a blight by farmers, the immature galls can be sold for many times more than the corn if it had not been infected. They are called huitlacoche when being used as culinary, and are described as tasting sweet and savory with earthy tones.
When infecting the kernel, the corn tries to protect itself using a reactive oxygen species, that in turn is countered by the fungus’s YAP1 gene that protects it from oxidative stress. Genetic research into M. Maydis has actually worked tangible results in our ongoing fight against breast cancer!
M. Maydis is a basidiomycota or “club type” fungus, which is to say it belongs to the same order as the classic mushrooms you’re used to seeing such as fly aminita/agaric which is the inspiration for the Super Mario power up mushroom.
This fungus is also considered a model species as in it’s sporidia phase is capable of accepting gene modification.
M. Maydis is also capable of synthesizing the essential amino acid lysine, which we need but cannot produce ourselves.
So, you see, not all corn infecting funguses are bad. Some are actually really cool, and have funny names like “smut”.
So my SO really wanted to try this. We were vacationing in Mexico and bought it at Walmart of all places.
We were at an Airbnb and were gonna make it, but we chickened out. Afraid of doing it wrong and getting sick.
It’s like, with chicken, I’ve prepared it enough times that when I crack open the package, I can tell pretty easily if it’s gone bad. Or when I cook it, I know to cook it long enough so it’s not pink.
But that stuff? There’s so much we didn’t know, and were too afraid to try. A missed opportunity for sure.
As I understand it, it’s not legal to sell in the US.
That makes my interaction early today make so much more sense!
I have a bodega within walking distance and asked about getting some fresh or dried, and the clerk legit laughed. Then he told me in Spanglish pretty much “good luck” he got some fresh one time but was very expensive.