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".
I've wanted to try this for so long but I don't live in corn country 😔
Fun fact though, Huitlacoche is a semi-indigenous American (this form of the word developed after colonization and it technically spanish) word originating from the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
Here's the full etymology
In Mexico, corn smut is known as huitlacoche, sometimes spelled cuitlacoche. This word entered Spanish in Mexico from Classical Nahuatl, though the Nahuatl words from which huitlacoche is derived are debated. In modern Nahuatl, the word for huitlacoche is cuitlacochin, and some sources deem cuitlacochi to be the classical form.Some sources wrongly give the etymology as coming from the Nahuatl words cuitlatl ("excrement" or "rear-end", actually meaning "excrescence") and cochtli ("sleeping", from cochi "to sleep"), thus giving a combined mis-meaning of "sleeping/hibernating excrement", but actually meaning "sleeping excrescence", referring to the fact that the fungus grows between the kernels of corn and impedes them from developing, thus they remain "sleeping".
A second group of sources deem the word to mean "raven's excrement." These sources appear to be combining the word cuitlacoche for "thrasher" with cuitla, meaning "excrement," actually meaning "excrescence". However, the avian meaning of cuitlacoche derives from the Nahuatl word "song" cuīcatl, from the verb "to sing" cuīca. This root then clashes with this reconstruction's second claim that the segment cuitla- comes from cuitla ("excrement").
One source derives the meaning as "corn excrescence," using cuītla again and "corn" tlaōlli. This requires the linguistically unlikely evolution of tlaōlli "corn" into tlacoche.
In Peru, it is known as chumo or pacho.
Neither do I but a bodega down the street actually had the canned cuitlahoche. You're not missing much honestly. I would love to try it fresh at some point though.
I'm honestly just weird about fungus and have an immense desire to try as many edible (and sometimes not so edible lol) fungi as I can. This one specifically pains me because I deeply love the history of indigenous American cultures.
An ex got me a pink oyster log for Valentine's last year, it started pinning a few weeks ago and I've been on a pink oyster binge ever since. Too bad this species isn't a woody guy, so you could transport it easily.
My parents had this maple tree between our and our neighbors houses since before I was born but at some point during my teenage years it started to rot. I don't know when it began or what caused it but I watched the maple tree I used to climb and who's leaves I used to play in every fall develop a crevasse in its truck that got larger every year. Eventually it began to lean and discussion regarding its removal began. It was around that time though that my affinity for fungus began to develop (started growing them in my closet lol) and I noticed pearl oysters fruiting from that crevasse. Anyway I convinced them to keep a portion of its trunk and every time it fruits is a feast! The tree lives on in my stomach as well as my heart. There's a hole in the ground where it used to be that also grows reishi which is pretty cool
That is wholesome as fuck! Thanks for the heart warming story on this cold overcast morning.
One of the best foods I've ever had, and definitely the one I've thought of most since eating it, was a fresh corn tamal(e) with huitlacoche. It was the most delicately flavored and delicately textured food I've ever had, with small pieces of fresh corn kernel and even corn silk still in the masa. This description really does not do justice...
Edit: spelling. Sorry Yiddish, that was just my mistake.
I'm very curious where that was the local spelling (and also being a fat ass kinda want to eat it.).
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.