Rustic Mayflower Bean and Hominy Stew

When autumn's chill settles into your bones and the leaves begin their colorful descent, few dishes offer more comfort than a bowl of hearty soup that connects us to America's agricultural roots. This Rustic Hominy and Mayflower Bean Soup brings together two of our continent's most storied ingredients in a celebration of indigenous wisdom and colonial heritage. The creamy texture of slow-simmered beans mingles with the distinctive chew of nixtamalized corn, while butternut squash adds autumnal sweetness and vibrant color. This is soul-warming food that tells a story in every spoonful.

The Mayflower Bean: An Indigenous Gift to Plymouth Colony

The Mayflower bean carries a name that immediately conjures images of Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, and indeed, this heirloom variety is believed to have been grown in the gardens of Plymouth Colony. But the true story begins long before European settlers arrived on these shores. These beautiful beans—featuring cream-colored backgrounds adorned with burgundy splashes and speckles—were a gift from the Native Americans who shared their agricultural knowledge and saved the colonists from starvation.

The Wampanoag people had been cultivating beans alongside corn and squash for thousands of years in the ingenious Three Sisters planting system. Beans provided nitrogen to feed the corn, corn stalks offered structure for the beans to climb, and squash leaves shaded the soil to retain moisture and suppress weeds. Without this indigenous agricultural wisdom, the Plymouth colonists would not have survived their first brutal winters. The beans and corn they grew were not English crops adapted to the New World—they were Native American varieties, carefully developed over millennia, generously shared during a time of desperate need.

When you cook with Mayflower beans today, you're not just preserving a piece of colonial history—you're honoring indigenous agricultural innovation that predates European arrival by thousands of years. These beans cook up tender and creamy with a subtle, almost nutty flavor that makes them incredibly versatile in the kitchen. Unlike the industrially-grown beans found in supermarkets, Mayflower beans come from small farms that have preserved this variety through generations of careful seed saving. They don't just taste better because they're fresher (though ours are delivered years fresher than store competitors), they taste better because they were developed over centuries by indigenous peoples to be delicious, nutritious, and perfectly adapted to this land.

Why Dry Hominy Beats Canned Every Time

Hominy is as indigenous to this continent as the beans we're cooking it with. While it's certainly convenient to grab a can of hominy from the shelf, choosing dry hominy elevates this soup from good to extraordinary and connects us more directly to the ancient foodways that sustained peoples across the Americas for millennia.

Dry hominy is whole corn that has been nixtamalized—treated with an alkaline solution like lime or wood ash—a transformative process developed by Mesoamerican peoples thousands of years ago. This brilliant technique unlocks niacin and other nutrients while giving the corn its distinctive earthy, almost mineral-like flavor. The colonists had no corn of their own and no knowledge of how to process it. Without Native American generosity in sharing both the crop and the ancient techniques for preparing it, corn would have remained inedible and nutritionally incomplete for European settlers. Nixtamalization was sophisticated food science developed over countless generations, and it remains one of humanity's great culinary innovations.

The difference between canned and dry hominy is night and day. Dry hominy has a superior texture, offering that satisfying chew and pop that makes each bite interesting. The flavor is cleaner, more pronounced, without the tinny taste that often comes with canned products. Most importantly, when you cook dry hominy yourself, you control everything that goes into your soup. No added sodium, no preservatives, no mysterious can linings—just pure, honest corn that has been transformed through time-honored indigenous tradition. Yes, it requires a bit of advance planning with the soaking step, but the payoff in taste and texture makes it absolutely worth those few extra minutes.

Rustic Mayflower Bean and Hominy Stew

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Category

Soup

Rustic hominy and Mayflower bean soup celebrates heirloom ingredients in a comforting bowl. Learn why dry hominy beats canned and discover the story of colonial-era beans.

Author:

Lisa Riznikove

Ingredients

• 1 cup dry fat red hominy

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• 1 cup Mayflower beans (or substitute with Jacob's Cattle or cranberry beans)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1 strip kombu
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 cups vegetable stock
• 3-4 cups water (as needed)
• 3 cups butternut squash, peeled and cubed (about 1-inch cubes)
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

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Directions

1. Prepare the hominy: Place the dry hominy in a large bowl and cover with hot water. Let soak while you prepare the beans, at least 30 minutes. When ready to cook, drain the soaking water and rinse the hominy thoroughly under cold running water.

2. Prep the beans: While the hominy soaks, rinse the Mayflower beans and pick through them carefully, discarding any stones or broken beans.

3. Start the soup base: Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and sauté until softened and translucent, about 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Combine and cook: Add the rinsed beans and hominy to the pot with the sautéed onions. Add the tablespoon of salt, kombu strip, and bay leaf. Pour in the vegetable stock and enough water to cover everything by about 2 inches. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat.

5. Simmer: Once boiling, reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid, and simmer gently for 60-90 minutes, checking occasionally to ensure the liquid hasn't evaporated. The beans should be tender and creamy, and the hominy should be pleasantly chewy. Add more water if needed during cooking to keep everything well covered.

6. Add the squash: When the beans and hominy are tender, add the cubed butternut squash and season generously with black pepper. Continue simmering, covered, for about 20-25 minutes, or until the squash is fork-tender.

7. Season and serve: Taste and adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper as needed. Remove the kombu and bay leaf. Ladle into warm bowls and garnish generously with fresh chopped parsley.