Tortillas!

Posted by teamsupperclub on November 23, 2011 · 2 Comments 

I made a wonderful friend while teaching fitness classes at a senior center.  I have been to Mass with Consuelo and most recently she was generous enough to teach myself and my boyfriend how she makes tortillas, which has been passed on to her from her own parents (her mother :D) So far I have now made homemade tortillas just twice, but they are absolutely delicious and surprisingly not very complicated, once with Consuelo and successfully on my own for the 2nd time!

I find tortillas from the store plain and boring.  Also, tortillas require very few ingredients and often packaged they come with a huge list of ingredients using with partially hydrogenated soybean oil which I find unnecessary.  And, of course, it is always so much more fun to cook yourself and especially with friends! This was an delightful experience and indeed tasty !

This recipe for tortillas makes a thicker tortilla that is best when made into a quesadilla right away or for eating plain (or with butter) accompanied with beans or any sort of meal.  These tortillas (at least so far for me) since they tend to be thicker are not so handy for making enchiladas and such, so I am still searching for a recipe that would make good tortillas for rolling.

But these tortillas paired with a meal, Mmmmmmm so yummy! (they also freeze very nicely)

So here is Consuelo’s recipe (which in fact she had never written down before passing it on to me, pretty cool!)

 

Comal - a pan for making tortillas

 

 

Tortillas

Ingredients:

4 cups flour (3 white + 1 wheat) – this can be changed up if you like, but with more wheat flour, might be too thick

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons lard (Consuelo uses bacon grease) but 1/4 of oil (such as olive or canola) can easily be substituted

Salt to taste

1 1/2 cups warm water

1/2 cup of masa

Directions:

• In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and masa.  Make a well in the dry ingredients and into the well pour the oil (or lard) and water.  With your hands, mix the wet into the dry.  The dough is the right consistency when it no longer sticks to your hands (you may have to add either a little flour or a little water) and is slightly elastic when you pull a little away from the larger ball of dough.  Then knead for 5 or so minutes.

• Drizzle a little oil over the ball and cover the bowl with a towel to let it sit for about 30 minutes.

• Flour a flat surface and pinch pieces off of the dough.  For larger tortillas take more, and for smaller take less.  I use a little than a golf ball amount of dough for each tortilla.  Roll it out on the floured surface.  (the first few that I rolled out did not look much like circles, but with a little practice it gets better!)

• On the stove-top, set the burner to medium heat (you will need to play with what works best with your stove).  A comal is the best pan to use when cooking the tortillas.  This is a smooth, flat griddle usually used to cook tortillas.  I do not have  a comal so I use the flattest frying pan I have.  Do not grease the pan, put the rolled out tortilla in the pan.  When the edges start to rise up, you know you are ready to flip it – with practice and quickness use your fingers to grip the edge and flip it real quick to cook the other side.  The tortillas cook relatively fast.

One tip that I have is when I made them myself, I thought I could roll out all the tortillas at once and so I placed them on top of each other. DO NOT DO 😀 The dough will of course all stick together.  But if this happens it is easy enough to ball it up and start over.

If you are serving the tortillas right away – cover them with a towel to keep them warm.

They are delicious with a little butter! But enjoy them however you like!

TortillaMix-MasaHarina

This is the Masa I have in my kitchen.

Rolling out the Dough

Consuelo showing us how it is done!

Teamwork!

Can you tell which is mine and which is Consuelo's?

So delicious!

See you in the kitchen,

Katie

Filed under Breads and Grains · Tagged with harina de maiz, I, masa, tortillas