Making Your Own Flour Tortillas: Forget the Store-Bought

To be very honest, tortillas from the supermarket may be a little, well, dull. In a hurry, they’re OK, but they often lack taste and that appealing fresh-from-the-kitchen quality. This is a revolutionary recipe for flour tortillas manufactured at home. The results are much superior than anything you can buy pre-packaged, and it’s very simple.

You’ll want the following:

Flour Power: This recipe begins with 4 cups of all-purpose flour and yields around 24 tortillas, which is enough for a crowd.
Baking powder gives our tortillas a little lift and fluffy texture.
The dough gains depth of flavor with a dusting of salt.
The Secret Ingredient: Traditionally used in Mexican cooking, lard gives the tortillas their ideal texture in addition to taste. Fear not—vegetable shortening can suffice in a pinch if you run out of lard.
H2O: The tortillas’ structure comes from the gluten in the dough, which is developed in part by water.

Making the Enchantment Come to Pass

A synopsis of the procedure follows:

Dough Time: To make a soft dough, combine all of the dry ingredients first, then add the oil and water.
Knead to Know: Creating a smooth, elastic dough, a rapid knead helps to produce gluten.
Ballin’: We’ll roll the dough into balls after dividing it into equal portions; these will be our future tortillas!
Using a rolling pin, we will flatten each ball into a thin circle one at a time.
Finally, we’ll fry the tortillas in a heated pan until they’re crispy and golden brown.

Endless Possibilities for the Tortilla

For good reason, tortillas are a mainstay of Mexican cooking: they are highly adaptable! These are just a few suggestions to spark your imagination:

For a fiesta in your mouth, load up your favorite fixings inside spicy beef burritos.
A melty, corny fantasy come true are chicken quesadillas.
Simmer some chicken and peppers, then wrap them in these delicacies, to make homemade chicken fajitas.
And Much Much More!Use them for whatever your heart wants, including tacos, wraps and enchiladas.

Maintaining Freshness of Your Tortillas

Though they keep best fresh, homemade tortillas may be kept in the refrigerated for up to a week or at room temperature for up to 24 hours in an airtight container.

Bonus Advice: Did you realize tortillas could be frozen? They keep up to two months! Either use wax or parchment paper to separate them or flash freeze them on a baking sheet before storing to keep them from adhering together.

Put down the tortillas from the supermarket and try this recipe instead. You wont be let down!