Authentic Handmade Corn Tortillas

For neater edges, add more water and be sure to wet your hands before rolling dough into balls

If you think you don’t like corn tortillas, it’s because you’ve never had a handmade tortilla that’s still too hot for any sane person to eat. I don’t like packaged corn tortillas either, they taste like cardboard with a texture like sand. They’re cheap and quick to make at home- faster than going to the store for tortillas.

Ingredients

Maseca brand masa flour

Salt

Water

Procedure

This is stupid easy. You follow the directions on the bag with some minor modifications. Double the salt and use boiling water instead of warm. 

Mix your dough with a dough scraper or spoon and then switch to kneading by hand until it’s smooth and not sticky. 

Roll it into a log, then cut into even pieces for the batch you’re making. 

Once your log is cut into discs, wet your hands a little and roll each piece into a ball. Cover your collection of balls with a damp paper towel. 

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat, and if you’ve got more than one, fire ‘em up! You can cook a whole batch in no time at all.

I don’t have a tortilla press, honestly every time I’ve used one I’ve screwed it up in some new and different way. Just use a gallon ziploc bag, cut so it opens like a book and 2 big heavy hardback books. Put the first book on your counter, then lay the ziploc on top and open it up like a book. Put one dough ball in the center of the ziploc, close your ziploc “book” to cover, then top with the other heavy book and press down hard! Or move the whole setup to the floor and stand on it. Take off the top book and peel one side of the ziploc off the dough, then peel the other side off the dough.

Toss your uncooked tortilla in the pan and cook for 1 minute, flip (quit your whining and just use your fingers, everything else sucks.) and cook for 1 minute more.

ProTips

• Don’t try to peel the tortilla off the ziploc, peel the ziploc off the tortilla or it will rip! 
• If you preheat your oven to its lowest setting, then turn it off, you can stack your tortillas in there as they come off the stove and they’ll stay warm. Cover them with a damp paper towel.
• These are fantastic with butter, but Chili honey butter is AMAZING (butter, chili powder, honey, nuke in microwave for 10 seconds and stir together)
• To freeze, stack between pieces of parchment, allow them to cool completely, then slide into a big ziploc and freeze flat. To defrost, nuke tortillas for 10 seconds at a time, flipping after each zap, until hot (about a minute). A big batch can be wrapped in foil and heated in the oven.