Homemade Corn Tortillas
When I was in the Peace Corp, stationed in the highlands of Western Honduras, I marveled at how the women of the household crossed town to bring cooked corn to the molino or local mill before sunrise at 4 a.m. There the corn was ground into masa or dough to make tortillas for workers to bring to the fields. After two years of eating freshly made tortillas, I was spoiled upon returning to the States. The tortillas that I bought in the supermarket tasted so bland and so did the ones I made from the staple corn flour, Maseca, So, after years of trial and error, I ran across a suitable recipe with the key being high-quality masa, specifically, the rich yellow corn flour made by Bob’s Red Mill. With a little water and vegetable oil and the magic of a tortilla press, I was cranking out homemade tortillas that rivaled the ones I tasted in Honduras. With only 3 ingredients and 12 minutes, you can be making homemade corn tortillas, too!
Ingredients
- ½ cup Bob’s Red Mill Masa Harina Golden Corn Flour, see note below in step 4.
- 1 t. vegetable oil
- 5 T. room temperature water
Directions
- Step 1 First, measure out the corn flour and add it to a small mixing bowl along with the oil and water. Then, use your fingers to work the oil and water into the flour until you form a soft yet pliable dough. Next, divide the dough into 3 or 4 equal portions, rolling them into small balls. Note: 3 balls will yield slightly thicker tortillas, while 4 balls will produce thinner tortillas. It’s a matter of your preference.
- Step 2 Now, take a tortilla press if you have the luxury of one and sandwich one ball of dough between two 8 x 8-inch squares of parchment paper. Press down until the lever cannot move any further and then, release. Peel the tortilla off the parchment paper and repeat this step for the two other tortillas. Note: if you don’t have a tortilla press, you can place the ball on a piece of parchment paper and use your fingers to spread out the dough as thin as you can, working from the center toward the edges. I have found that forming the tortillas by hand is equivalent to the 3 ball proportion used in step 1 with the tortilla press. Note: if you’re thinking of buying a tortilla press, I recommend buying Victoria’s 8-inch Cast Iron Tortilla Press, available on Amazon.
- Step 3 Now, to cook the tortillas, heat an ungreased 8-10-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. When the skillet is warm, add a tortilla and cook for 2 minutes, then flip, and cook for 2 minutes on the other side. Remove from heat and place in a warming oven or wrap in a cloth. Because the pan is hot by this point, cook the subsequent tortillas for 1 minute or so per side. Serve and enjoy!
- Step 4 Note: this recipe depends on the quality of the corn flour, so I highly recommend that you buy Bob’s Red Mill Masa Harina Golden Corn Flour, available on Amazon or at specialty grocery stories.
Instead of settling for bland supermarket tortillas, now you can enjoy the best homemade corn tortillas. Here I recount my tips of decades of experience, which I learned from my own trial and error and from Honduran women I met in the Peace Corps.