Corn tortillas
When I think of corn tortillas, the best description that comes to mind is, if the word “home” had a flavor, this would be it! So many of Mexico’s dishes revolve around corn. Tortillas are what accompany so many delicious meals. Tortillas marry so many ingredients. They bring perfection into Mexican meals and they create memories!
One of my happiest memories, was going to our local tortilleria, buying whatever amount of tortillas my mom had asked for, having the tortillas wrapped in a beautiful and colorful hand embroidered tortillas napkin, and eating quite a few of those tortillas on my walk back home. The taste of a fresh made tortilla is simply indescribable!
Tortilla, from Spanish torta, cake, plus the diminutive -illa, literally means “little cake”.
A tortilla is made by curing maize (corn) in limewater in the nixtamalization process, which causes the skin of the corn kernels to peel off and then grinding it. The process, called nixtamalization, was developed indigenously by pre-Columbian cultures and predates European contact by many centuries, if not millennia. Soaking the maize in limewater is important because it makes available the B vitamin niacin and the amino acid tryptophan. [from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_tortilla]
In Mexican towns or cities one can watch in local tortillerias how the tortillas are made with machines. The dough [masa] is filled into a big container at the top and then pushes down into the machine, where it’s formed into tortillas. A metal conveyor takes the tortillas through an oven for baking. Usually every second a tortilla drops out of the machine at the end of the conveyor.
The modern tortillerias also sell salsas, pre-cooked beans or rice and tortilla chips. In the past tortillerias would only sell tortillas. What is the same nowadays as in the past is the long queues outside tortillerias before lunch time, of people (mainly kids) buying fresh tortillas to enjoy with the lunch.
For a step by step video of how to make corn tortillas watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrC_rPOeD8M
Corn tortillas
Ingredients
- 2 cups Nixtamalizado corn flour (Naturelo has very good flour)
- 1 1/2 cups hot water
- 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Add the flour, the salt and 1 cup of the hot water to a bowl
- Mix the ingredients around in the bowl with the fingers until the mix turns into a sandy consistency. (Do not use the whole hand)
- Add the rest of the water little by little and mix it with thw whole hand. The dough should have the consistency of play-doh. Constantly knead the dough for a few minutes. If the dough is too sticky add some more flour until it has the right consistency. If the dough is too dry add more water. Adding more flour or water if the consistency is not like play-doh should be done little by little in order to find the right balance.
- Let the dough rest for 30min in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a wet towel.
- Ball up the dough into golf ball size pieces.
- Cover the tortilla press with plastic. A cut up plastic bag works best. Put a tortilla dough ball between the plastic sides into the tortilla press and press down hard on the tortilla press to flatten the dough. If you don't have a tortilla press you can use a rolling pin and roll out the dough ball (between plastic) into a round tortilla shape
- Heat up your comal, crepe pan or frying pan to very high heat. Put the tortilla into the pan and leave it for 15 sec. Flip it and leave it for 1 min. Flip it over and leave it for another 1 min. before you take it out. With the last flip the tortilla should blow up. This is a good sign, as it means that the tortilla is fully cooked. Put the finished tortilla in a tortilla basket or between 2 towels to keep them warm until served.
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Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂