Michele613 wrote:Hey Boogie, do you make your own taco shells? All I can find here (outside US) is Ortega taco shells but they are obviously with oil....I could eat tacos for a meal every day. Trying to learn how to make my own corn tortillas because I can only get flour ones with lard or other oil substance. I miss the crunch of the taco
I don't make crunchy ones. But, yes, I'm learning to make my own. Do you have access to any hispanic foods? You just need some masa harina flour. If you have a Mexican or latino ethnic section in the grocers, they should have the masa harina flour for making tortillas.
It takes a little bit of practice. I'm new at it, and I'd say it took me a good 6 batches before my tortillas were consistent as far as size and thickness.
You can get a tortilla press from Walmart, or Amazon. This is the one I have. There are better, but this one was cheap and it works:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Norpro-Torti ... s/23624926This is the kind of flour you need:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Maseca-Insta ... B/10291185To make the tortillas, you just mix a little salt and water with the flour. Knead it, let it sit for a while according to the directions, then roll it into balls a little bigger than a golf ball.
You need a piece or two of plastic to put down on the tortilla press, and to cover the ball of flour mixture. I used a coffee filter plastic bag. But, it basically needs to be plastic the thickness of a normal plastic garbage bag. Thicker than plastic wrap, which is too thin.
I tried parchment paper and it didn't work. So, it needs to be plastic, like I described.
Then, you press it out into a tortilla form, then put it onto a hot griddle.
You can find a ton of videos on how to do this on YouTube. It will take some practice. But, I'm pretty good at it now.
I will say, that I had terrible luck with Bob's Red Mill organic masa flour. They were super nice and are going to refund my money. It was too coarse and heavy. I've decided I don't care about GMOs anymore, if using organic flour won't work for good tortillas. I'm sure the reason didn't have anything to do with it being organic, but that the mill was too coarse - but there wasn't any other organic masa harina flour available. So, I give up on that idea.
Anyway, if you're willing to put in the effort, it does end up being really easy - once you know what you're doing. And then, you have great tortillas that have no oil - just corn flour with lime stone, salt and water.