11-02-2007, 09:56 AM
Regarding homemade tortillas, here's what I find works the best for flour tortillas, after yeeears of experience:
Tools: rolling pin or tortilla press
clean working surface
cast iron flat frying pan (NO teflon!)
mixing bowl
mixing utensil (e.g. a sturdy wooden spoon)
flipping utensil (e.g. a wooden fork/fish press)
Ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose wheat flour
1/2 cup cold water
pinch of salt
a little bit of vegetable oil (e.g. olive)
extra flour for rolling, etc.
These amount will make 6 largish tortillas (8 smallish). If you want more, just double/triple the recipe...
Steps:
1) Mix together the ingredients in a mixing bowl. The dough tends to be quite sticky, so use a mixing utensil.
2) Using your hands (and plenty of extra flour), knead the dough on the working surface, until it's nice and even.
3) Divide the dough into equal balls (6 or 8, depending on your preferred size of tortilla), and place them to the side/in the mixing bowl for now.
4) Optional: lightly coat the dough balls with oil, to keep them from sticking to each other.
5) Place your cast iron frying pan on the stove, turn it to medium heat, and let it heat for ca 10 minutes BEFORE using it, so it's nice and hot, i.e. a drop of water will instantly sizzle on it. (If you don't, your first tortilla will be hard as cracker, not soft and supple like you want it.)
6) Press (using the tortilla press) or roll out the dough balls on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin. The key here is plenty of flour, to keep the dough from sticking to everything. The rolling is a matter of rolling the ball in one direction (making it oval shaped), then flipping sides AND angles and rolling again, to make it more round. In all, I probably flip each tortilla while rolling it out some 10-20 times or so. Just a ballpark figure...
7) Take the flat rolled out tortilla between your palms and lightly toss it back and forth to shake off excess flour. (This step also helps keep your work surface lightly floured for the next tortilla!)
8) Place the rolled out tortilla on the preheated frying pan, and give it a minute or so. Normally, it will bubble up a lot. When the bubbles seem well filled out, it's usually time to flip it to the other side. This goes relatively fast, so it's probably easiest to have one person rolling tortillas, and another person flipping, at least until you get the hang of the basics.
NOTE: DO NOT (!!) grease the frying pan with anything. You want it to be completely dry!! Otherwise your tortillas will stick, as well as being much unhealthier. Rather , just try to shake off excess flour as described above, followed by dry frying.
NOTE2: Since you'll be dry frying, you will notice that some of the flour sticks to the pan and turns black/burned after a while. Assuming you've shaken off most of the excess flour, just leave this be. If you try to scrape it off with a wooden flipping fork or something, then all your following tortillas will get black soot on them. Bleh! Just leave the soot be, and try not to drag the tortilla against the bottom of the pan: just place them and flip them, no other movements should be required as regards the actual frying.
9) When both sides are nice and done (with a few beautiful brown circles/spots), place the tortilla inside of a clean folded tea towel on a plate. The tea towel lets them keep their heat while you fry the remainder, but still lets them breathe.
NOTE: After you are done, make sure to throw the tea towel in the laundry. Even if it looks, smells and feels clean, putting it away again will most definitely lead to mold and who knows what else!
10) Serve and enjoy!
Final note: You will get flour everywhere, so you might want to wear an apron.
Final note2: With this recipe, you will get tortillas that are very supple, even a bit stretchy, when fresh. However, like with almost all homemade tortillas, they tend to lose their suppleness if kept overnight or longer, even inside of e.g. 2 plastic bags, such that even if you heat them up and they roll around the contents easily, they will still tend to break somewhere as you bite into them.
Tortillas are a great, fun finger food. There's something very disarming about having a wonderful tasty fancy dinner, where everybody eats with their fingers. Oh, and by the way, most people don't roll their tortillas properly when eating them, meaning that a lot of the contents will fall out. Make sure you have lots of napkins available for all the beginners out there! (A properly rolled tortilla has a line of contents down the middle, stopping a bit away from one side. Fold it in half (creasing along the line of contents) once, then fold the "dry" end once or twice to keep the contents from spilling out the back, then roll up the rest (along the initial fold).
Hope this helps!
Enjoy!
/oboojoe
PS: Man, I should write a treatise on the intricacies of tortilla making some day! :-)
Tools: rolling pin or tortilla press
clean working surface
cast iron flat frying pan (NO teflon!)
mixing bowl
mixing utensil (e.g. a sturdy wooden spoon)
flipping utensil (e.g. a wooden fork/fish press)
Ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose wheat flour
1/2 cup cold water
pinch of salt
a little bit of vegetable oil (e.g. olive)
extra flour for rolling, etc.
These amount will make 6 largish tortillas (8 smallish). If you want more, just double/triple the recipe...
Steps:
1) Mix together the ingredients in a mixing bowl. The dough tends to be quite sticky, so use a mixing utensil.
2) Using your hands (and plenty of extra flour), knead the dough on the working surface, until it's nice and even.
3) Divide the dough into equal balls (6 or 8, depending on your preferred size of tortilla), and place them to the side/in the mixing bowl for now.
4) Optional: lightly coat the dough balls with oil, to keep them from sticking to each other.
5) Place your cast iron frying pan on the stove, turn it to medium heat, and let it heat for ca 10 minutes BEFORE using it, so it's nice and hot, i.e. a drop of water will instantly sizzle on it. (If you don't, your first tortilla will be hard as cracker, not soft and supple like you want it.)
6) Press (using the tortilla press) or roll out the dough balls on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin. The key here is plenty of flour, to keep the dough from sticking to everything. The rolling is a matter of rolling the ball in one direction (making it oval shaped), then flipping sides AND angles and rolling again, to make it more round. In all, I probably flip each tortilla while rolling it out some 10-20 times or so. Just a ballpark figure...
7) Take the flat rolled out tortilla between your palms and lightly toss it back and forth to shake off excess flour. (This step also helps keep your work surface lightly floured for the next tortilla!)
8) Place the rolled out tortilla on the preheated frying pan, and give it a minute or so. Normally, it will bubble up a lot. When the bubbles seem well filled out, it's usually time to flip it to the other side. This goes relatively fast, so it's probably easiest to have one person rolling tortillas, and another person flipping, at least until you get the hang of the basics.
NOTE: DO NOT (!!) grease the frying pan with anything. You want it to be completely dry!! Otherwise your tortillas will stick, as well as being much unhealthier. Rather , just try to shake off excess flour as described above, followed by dry frying.
NOTE2: Since you'll be dry frying, you will notice that some of the flour sticks to the pan and turns black/burned after a while. Assuming you've shaken off most of the excess flour, just leave this be. If you try to scrape it off with a wooden flipping fork or something, then all your following tortillas will get black soot on them. Bleh! Just leave the soot be, and try not to drag the tortilla against the bottom of the pan: just place them and flip them, no other movements should be required as regards the actual frying.
9) When both sides are nice and done (with a few beautiful brown circles/spots), place the tortilla inside of a clean folded tea towel on a plate. The tea towel lets them keep their heat while you fry the remainder, but still lets them breathe.
NOTE: After you are done, make sure to throw the tea towel in the laundry. Even if it looks, smells and feels clean, putting it away again will most definitely lead to mold and who knows what else!
10) Serve and enjoy!
Final note: You will get flour everywhere, so you might want to wear an apron.
Final note2: With this recipe, you will get tortillas that are very supple, even a bit stretchy, when fresh. However, like with almost all homemade tortillas, they tend to lose their suppleness if kept overnight or longer, even inside of e.g. 2 plastic bags, such that even if you heat them up and they roll around the contents easily, they will still tend to break somewhere as you bite into them.
Tortillas are a great, fun finger food. There's something very disarming about having a wonderful tasty fancy dinner, where everybody eats with their fingers. Oh, and by the way, most people don't roll their tortillas properly when eating them, meaning that a lot of the contents will fall out. Make sure you have lots of napkins available for all the beginners out there! (A properly rolled tortilla has a line of contents down the middle, stopping a bit away from one side. Fold it in half (creasing along the line of contents) once, then fold the "dry" end once or twice to keep the contents from spilling out the back, then roll up the rest (along the initial fold).
Hope this helps!
Enjoy!
/oboojoe
PS: Man, I should write a treatise on the intricacies of tortilla making some day! :-)
