Giant in the Kitchen: Let’s Talk Tortillas
I'm a huge fan of tortillas. I like corn tortillas. I like flour tortillas. I like those green wraps that are labeled spinach but are probably flour tortillas with green food coloring. I used to go through about a pack of whole wheat tortillas a week until I started to read the labels. It turns out that store-bought tortillas have about 10% of your daily recommended intake of sodium. Those giant (and delicious) wrap style tortillas are closer to 25%. Now don't get me wrong, I love salt. It is the single most important spice, but you can only eat so much of it.
Consider a typical day for me. I'm a big guy with a two burrito for dinner kind of appetite. With the store bought wraps, I've just eaten half of my sodium for the day. And, you know I've put salt in the fillings, so considering the beans, rice, chicken, sour cream, shredded cheddar, I'm at 80, maybe 85% of my daily salt intake. Add that to the 30% I had at breakfast and lunch, and I'm way over. I'm screwed. I know I'm gonna have stove top popcorn for a snack later on, and there's no way to eat that without a dash of salt. This is the kind of thing that will crawl into the back of my head, and slowly piss me off. My day is ruined, (RUINED!) because I'm all salty from the damn tortillas.
A few months ago I decided to show the tortilla companies who's boss by no longer procuring their tasty consumables. Three days later I woke up in the woods completely naked with no recollection of what had happened. Withdrawal is a hell of a thing...It was then that I decided that I needed to make my own low-sodium flour tortillas. I haven't looked back since.
What Ingredients You'll Need:
- Flour
- 2 cups unbleached white (preferably organic)
- 1 cup whole wheat (you could probably use any non white flour, but ww is the most low-key as far as flavor)
- Salt
- Your pick of style. I use 1 tsp of ground sea salt. This is optional, but I'd put in at least ¼ of a tsp.
- Oil
- A scantly filled ½ cup
- Water
- 1 cup at room temp.
This really is a simple recipe. I've adapted it from The Well-Filled Tortilla Cookbook. The book is decent if for no other reason than the flour, corn, and hominy tortilla recipes. It's also selling used for 46 cents on amazon, which is basically free (if you round to the nearest dollar...).
The How To:
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Stir in the oil with a wooden spoon. Large clumps will form, this is normal, just break them up with the back of your spoon. Add the water. Stir until you get a gooey ball. Knead the ball on a floured cutting board until it comes together. It should be a very manageable ball of dough (maybe 4 minutes). Stick the dough back in the bowl and let rest, tightly covered on the counter, for at least 30 minutes. At this point you can stick the bowl in the fridge and it will keep for a couple of days.
After the dough has rested, heat a big dry skillet, preferably cast iron, on the stove over medium high heat. I use cast iron because the tortillas are cooked dry, and the dough doesn't stick to the cast iron. You can probably also use a non-stick skillet. I'd avoid aluminum because the tortillas might cook onto it.
Take out the dough and use your hands to shape it into a 1 inch thick oblong squareish shape - i.e. a rectangle (Check the pictures). Cut into 10 to 12 even sized pieces. If you want bigger tortillas go for 10, if not, you know, do 12. The choice is yours. Make each piece into a small ball and roll it out with a rolling pin (or a clean wine bottle), making them as thin as possible. If you are careful, you will get nice round circles, if you aren't careful you'll have amoeba looking tortillas. I like the variety of making both. This dough is really forgiving, so if you mess any part of this up you can just reball it and roll it out again. Keep in mind that there isn't any leavening agent, so it's not like you're going to slaughter the yeast by not being caring enough.
Take a rolled out piece of dough and carefully lay it out in your hot skillet. Cook for about 40 seconds on the first side and 30 seconds on the second side. You want to get little brown spots, but you don't want to burn it. (Again check the pictures) The tortilla will have bubbles puff up. This is normal, just press them down with a spatula.
The process of cooking the tortillas takes about 20 minutes, but you can cut that time in half by using two skillets. The tortillas will keep for a few days if wrapped well in foil or tupperware. Just reheat in the microwave covered with a wet paper towel. The tortillas freeze well, so once you get the hang of the recipe, double it up and you'll have enough for a couple of weeks.
