How to Make Tortillas

Tortillas are a staple of Mexican cuisine whether they’re served d as fried tacos woven to soft burritos or layered into enchiladas. The history of tortillas dates back to 10,000BC when a peasant first prepared this flat cornbread for the Mayan King. Missionaries later spread the recipe for tortillas throughout California and today they are a favorite over white bread for their versatility and low fat content. Hi I’m Chef Jason Hill. I’m outside the Mission Tortilla Factory in Anaheim. Now let’s head back into the kitchen and we’ll see how easy it is to make home made tortillas. Welcome back to the kitchen, today’s flour tortilla recipe calls for five ingredients, flour, vegetable shortening, salt, baking powder and some water. First place four cups of all purpose flour into a large bowl, followed by eight teaspoons of baking powder then add a half a cup of shortening and we’re going to work this in there with our hands. Keep working for about a minute or two until you get like a course meal consistency. Now I whisk in one and a half teaspoon of sea salt into lukewarm water and that’s one cup of water and I’m going to drizzle the warm water in slowly and I’m going to start to mix to make a soft dough. See how that’s coming together? If feel you need to add a little more water you can, you can see my dough is not completely coming together so I’m going to put about another quarter cup of warm water in there and work it again. After working the dough for about I form it into a ball, I place I into a bowl, I’m going to place it in a bowl and I’m going to cover this for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, we’re going to uncover, we’re going to break this up into 12 little balls flatten them out and make our tortillas. Next, I coat my hands with a little bit of shortening, I’m going to take a couple pieces of dough and were going to roll them up into little balls. To fry the tortillas, pre-heat your or griddle on medium heat, I find that cast iron works really well for the tortillas. To roll the tortillas place a little bit of flour on my work surface and a little bit on my rolling pin, I like to use these smaller rolling pins for the tortillas. I’m just going to lay the dough right on there and we’ll just start to roll it out. You want to get it as thin as possible and lay the tortillas on your pre-heated pan and you’re going to flip this every 15 to 20 seconds. Okay after 15 seconds give it a turn, you can see it’s starting to cook and brown. Oh, man this smells great. You can see it’s going to start to bubble, that’s okay. Okay, after they’re done I like to remove, and place it on a towel, cover, and keep warm as I continue cooking them. I like to serve tortillas right off the pan spread it with a little bit of butter. Today tortillas are used in variety of ways, I mean if you make them homemade, it makes all the difference. Thanks for tuning in.