Every time I chew on one of the freakishly large kernels, I think I’m going to break a tooth.
But I don’t and find myself reaching into the bag for another handful.
CornNuts is perhaps the most surprisingly popular snack in America. And they actually have an interesting history. Grab a bag and I’ll tell you.
Where in the world do they find corn that big?
Peru via Salina Valley, CA, by the way. But we’ll get to that shortly.
Albert Holloway first sold whole fried and salted corn kernels in the 1930s under the name Olin’s Brown Jug Toasted Corn (don’t you love old product names?). , Texas common field corn.
Then, in one of those world-changing moments, a day shortly before World War II, Mr. Holloway saw an article in the local newspaper about some corn in Peru that had kernels larger than a quarter.
The corn was called giant Cuzco and farmers grew it 9,000 feet up in the rugged Andes mountains. It can still be seen served cooked in Peru and in Peruvian restaurants in America.
It didn’t take long for Holloway to make a deal and start importing the corn to make his CornNuts. But prices were high and supplies always tight, so he tried to grow corn at home. The problem was that nobody knew how to do it.
Enter Donald Shaver, a plant breeder from Illinois. He heard about the corn problem and contacted Holloway to offer him a deal. If CornNuts funded his ongoing research, he would work exclusively on the project. In 1963, Shaver finally cracked the code, so to speak. It seems that the weather was the problem and that brought them to the Salinas Valley in central California, near Monterey. It has a near perfect match with the native growing region and corn thrived. It pays to have a big country to work.
CornNuts moved all production to California and the rest is history.
Go ahead, grab another handful.