Mushroom vendor now cultivates corn fungus for Mexican dishes
Mike Jozwik recently harvested his quarter-acre field of corn. But he didn’t gather corn, per se. Instead, his crop is the spongy blue-gray fungus growing on the corn cobs.
After five years of experimenting, Jozwik, the eponymous owner of Mushroom Mike LLC, has figured out how to cultivate huitlacoche — a corn fungus considered a delicacy in Mexican cuisine that often is used in quesadillas and soups.
Restaurants and individual buyers are able to purchase cobs of fresh or freeze-dried huitlacoche (pronounced whee-tla-KO-cheh) through Jozwik’s new business, WiscoHuit LLC.
Jozwik’s efforts to cultivate a huitlacoche crop were funded in part by the Frontera Farmer Foundation, a nonprofit led by Rick Bayless, the Chicago chef specializing in traditional Mexican cuisine. The foundation gave Jozwik two separate $12,000 grants in 2017 and 2019.
Huitlacoche is a fungus that grows naturally on corn, but according to Jozwik, it can be notoriously hard to cultivate as a crop.
“Pretty much every single farm field and agricultural field in the Midwest has this (fungus) already in the soil,” Jozwik said. “If corn is injured, you’ll see it from time to time.”
But getting the prized fungus to grow reliably and consistently is the challenge. After looking into the existing research on huitlacoche science and cultivation, Jozwik started his own experiments.
“I’m a science nerd; both my parents were science teachers,” Jozwik said. The process for cultivating huitlacoche “was so fascinating that it just took over my entire mind.”
No modified corn
The first step was picking the right corn. Many genetically modified corn varieties resist fungal infections, so Jozwik has had to use non-GMO corn varieties. He had the most success with a sweet corn variety but also is working with field corn and an Indian gem corn.
The sweet corn huitlacoche tastes sweeter than the usual huitlacoche that grows on field corn, which tends to have an earthy flavor. Jozwik is most interested in eventually using Mexican heirloom varieties.
With the right sweet corn in hand, Jozwik then had to find a way to “infect” the developing cobs with spores from huitlacoche fungus.
The best method so far:
“We have to touch every top of the corn that we want infected,” Jozwik said. “I probably touch every ear of corn close to five times before we harvest it.”
“That’s why the product is so expensive,” he said. “It’s labor intensive ... but I’m a sucker for pain.”
Jozwik’s efforts were at the mercy of pests and weather. He has several fields, and over time he lost one field of corn to sandhill cranes, another to flooding and the latest to the recent el derecho storm. He grows on a 24-acre farm southwest of Waukesha.
After years of tests, failed experiments and carefully recorded notes, Jozwik had his first real breakthrough this year. When walking through his field, he noticed white kernels popping through the top of an ear of corn.
When he peeled back the husk, he found a cob nearly completely infected with huitlacoche.
“I was ready to write off hundreds more hours in another season until I saw that one,” Jozwik said.
With a working cultivation method now in hand — Jozwik plans to patent it — the next step is to build up the distribution side of the business.
He has lined up distributors across the country and started taking local orders. One Milwaukee buyer is Odd Duck restaurant in Bay View, which is using the huitlacoche in a Oaxacan-themed tasting menu. The menu is being offered through mid-September, and Jozwik is “anxiously awaiting” the verdict. For more information on buying huitlacocheand other products, visit Mushroommikellc.com or email wiscohuit@mushroommikellc.com.
Jordan Nutting is a mass media fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science writing about science at the Journal Sentinel this summer. She’s working on a doctorate in organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.