Is there a best corn to grow for grinding corn meal?
just

A good white dent.

Last that was grown and hauled in to the mill in the family was Hickory King.

Ground into meal and grits and also to feed the stock.

Hickory King. My mom, an old country girl born in 1918 said that's the only corn they planted. Made cornmeal out of it, fed it to the stock and draft horses. She also said their household bread was cornbread, served daily. White flour was something bought from the store and reserved for morning biscuits and pies.

Love hearing these kinds of hand me down family stories. My dad used to grind up indian corn and it made gray corn bread with colored specks of purple, yellow and blue. Very tasty too as is any fresh ground meal.

Thanks guys but I was wondering about todays corn.
just

You can still get Hickory King.

Hickory king corn makes the best hominy too.

My mom and I used to make it every year.

Pencil Cob is the best I've ever grown. Mike

Where?
just

Why about any seed house. It's a heritage seed (not a hybrid), so you can replant it every year. I've grown it. Makes tall (like 8 or 9 foot tall) corn plants and the cobs are white and very small. The corn kernels are large and whiter than they are yellow. I've ground some I grew and it made a whitish corn meal. Also, if you pick it in the milk stage it is very good for corn on the cob. Use your search engine, A lot will come up.

Mom was pretty country, raised in Dent Co. Missouri in the Depression years. She said they didn't plant the corn in rows, they planted them in boxes or squares. After that tall Hickory King came up to some height they would hoe it one last time them plant some kind of squash and Kentucky Wonder pole beans and then leave the whole mess alone till harvest. The tall corn and squash runners did a decent job of keeping the weeds out. Seeds were kept back from everything for next years planting and the squash could be eaten or fed to the cattle and hogs. Beans were of course eaten year around as a staple.

I did a search and came up with a dozen or more places that carry it.

What are you all using to grind the corn? Does a regular hand crank meat grinder work for small batches?

When we raised hogs and high lysine corn we would grind it for cornbread. Its softer and has bigger hearts. Crows Company was one of the company's that had the seed, wouldn't know where to get it now.

You can do a search and find about any variety of corn. I grow Pencil Cob and Hickory King every year, also have an old corn from a Cherokee that he uses it for flour and hominy. He told me that it's what his grandfather grew as a child and they have kept seed for years. It makes good hominy but not as good for cornbread as the other two. Have grown Bloody Butcher and a few others over the years.

Ordered some Hickory King from Daves Garden.
Kind of expensive at 16cents a Kernel with shipping but we'll see.
just

I'm going to say no, the hand cranked grinder you can buy cheap will not get the meal fine enough. Those hand crank affairs that look like sausage grinders are made to just crack of mash the grain.

I used a coffee grinder. Just to make some meal out of what I'd grown. You need something that grinds pretty fine. I guess late 1800s early 1900s a corm meal grinder was a staple appliance in corn coulrty. Youcan still buy them new; Kitchen Aid makes an adapter for their their food processor. kind of pricey. They make grain grinders new 3 to 4 hundred buck$ as I remember. Look on EBay and they have some originals on sale.
My Mom's family (granddad, who I have met before he died in the 60s), owned a gasoline powered grist mill in the 20s. That's how they ground their corn.

Schumway's have several varieties at reasonable prices. If you can find a grinder with stones instead of steel burs you will be much happier. Mike

I don't know the answer to your question,,,but I love me some hot corn bread.

My cheap hand grinder does the job. Have to grind 3 times though.
There is a utube video that the guy used a food processor.
just