Homemade tortillas

I like spending days at home where I have nothing planned. Hell, I just like those days in general. But spending that much time bonding with my couch and my tv does tend to drive me a little bit crazy. So I like to figure out a new food to make.

We had some leftover little yukons from dinner the other night and I wanted to figure out what to use them in. Ultimately, I decided they should go in the mix with some chorizo and onions. And for that, they needed a nice wrapper, like some homemade corn tortillas.

So with that in mind, I rooted out the bag of masa that's been hanging out in the closet since... well, it's possible that we moved into this house with it. I had slight doubts about using masa this old, but you have to try it, right?

I took out all my Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy bookcooks and compared all the recipes for corn tortillas. At the end of the day, I used 1 3/4 cups of masa and more water than the recipe called for because it was so dry. The recipes called for making the consistency like cookie dough. Smooth and pliable yet didn't stick to your hands. One of the recipes called for resting for 30 min. One of them didn't. So I took the middle road, covered my dough, and let it rest in the few minutes that I started the chorizo/potato filling.

The Bayless recipe calls for shaping little dough balls about the size of a walnut. The Kennedy recipe calls for one ounce per ball. I went for walnut-sized and when pressed, thought they were too small, so I went a little bit bigger.

The tortilla press that I used has been in its plastic bag for probably almost ten years. It's probably as old as that bag of masa. It's shiny bright silver and I wonder if it's really good for making tortillas or too cheap. I'll have to research that.

Anyway, I cut off the tops of two sandwich bags and used them to press out the torillas. They came out kind of thick, but they were still fragile and more than a couple broke as I tried to transfer them to the hot skillet. As I kept making them though, I seemed to get into a rhythm and they were coming out with some consistency. It's hard to keep the big cast iron at the right temperature, but I was aiming for medium high. The recipes all called for 15 to 30 seconds per side. So I put one in a pan, flipped another, and put the third into the tortilla container. Repeat.

You can see that this resulted in pretty light-colored tortillas. And thick. We ate them with the chorizo/potato filling, though I didn't eat much, lost in thought on how they came out.

Further reading in the cookbooks revealed that Bayless specifies that you should cook it for 15 seconds on one side, but then go 30-45 seconds on the other til brown and splotchy and then flip and another 30-45 seconds again. Damn. So I fired up the skillet again and put the first four tortillas on it.

As good tortillas do, they puffed up, as you can see. But there isn't much browning. That seems bad. They also got pretty dried out while they were "browning" and puffing. So I didn't do that to any of the others.

I think I need new masa at least. I'm not blaming the masa, but maybe it would help. And I will try to go thinner on the press next time.

Here was my potato and chorizo filling. With onions. I meant to leave some onions uncooked as a topping for some crunch, but I forgot. I also forgot cheese and cilantro. This is what happens when you don't plan to cook and just do it. Oops.

Well, that was how my adventures in tortilla making went. Overall, I wouldn't call it a success, but I did learn that it's pretty easy to do and certainly simpler than doing something like making pasta. And faster. I'll try it again soon. When I have new masa.

And I was dying to try it with lard, but that's for flour tortillas which I think will take more practice. Sometime. Soon.