3 ms·

Please share your corn tortilla technique + recipe!

Syzygies 7y ago
I'll give a skeletal answer that will only make sense if one has read what's out there. These are just my choices where choices matter, leaving out the canonical: Measure cal by weight as a proportion of total weight of corn and water (for comparison Paul Bertolli estimates the water weight of meats in "Cooking by Hand" for his brine formulas). I like 0.5% cal and 4x water to corn. This is on the light end (standardized by total weight, recipes vary 0.3% to 1.6% cal) which brings out corn flavor. Simmer at least an hour, or more, till kernels are nearly al dente, not chalky. For less effort use a slow cooker, and start the clock hours later when it reaches 80 C. Leave overnight before rinsing well. The corn will have nearly doubled in weight. This is nixtamal. As recommended in “Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico” by Bricia Lopez, grind 4:15 water:nixtamal for 40 minutes in a 1.5 liter Premier Small Wonder Table Top Wet Grinder. Indian cooks, chocolatiers on a budget like this wet grinder. She recommends 450g corn. More will push off the lid, which one can fix by drilling a 1" deep hole with a 2 1/4" Forstner bit in a 5" or so square block of hardwood, to rest just over the lid as a lid stop. Then one can use more corn, which needs less tending. This is a problem like designing the paper feed in a copier, a career I'm grateful I don't have. If the masa is too wet, work in a bit of masa harina. Test by kneading by hand; it should be just shy of sticky, but not sticky. I bake harder than some say (I like brown specks and the resulting flavor) on a Baking Steel. I plan to experiment with an actual comal, which might breathe better as my masa is on the edge of too wet, like an artisanal bread dough. It puffs nicely. If one happens to have a VitaMix or VitaPrep commercial blender, one can get a reasonable approximation of this by blending corn with too much water, then thickening with masa harina. Masienda.com sells a masa harina from their white corn. Be aware that grind fineness is just one axis, and a VitaPrep can actually overdo this. One ends up 2:1 nixtamal:harina by dry weight, 2/3rds of the way there, with an inferior texture but much of the great flavor of different landrace corns. One will then decide a wet grinder is worth it.

I'll give a skeletal answer that will only make sense if one has read what's out there. These are just my choices where choices matter, leaving out the canonical: Measure cal by weight as a proportion of total weight of corn and water (for comparison Paul Bertolli estimates the water weight of meats in "Cooking by Hand" for his brine formulas). I like 0.5% cal and 4x water to corn. This is on the light end (standardized by total weight, recipes vary 0.3% to 1.6% cal) which brings out corn flavor. Simmer at least an hour, or more, till kernels are nearly al dente, not chalky. For less effort use a slow cooker, and start the clock hours later when it reaches 80 C. Leave overnight before rinsing well. The corn will have nearly doubled in weight. This is nixtamal. As recommended in “Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico” by Bricia Lopez, grind 4:15 water:nixtamal for 40 minutes in a 1.5 liter Premier Small Wonder Table Top Wet Grinder. Indian cooks, chocolatiers on a budget like this wet grinder. She recommends 450g corn. More will push off the lid, which one can fix by drilling a 1" deep hole with a 2 1/4" Forstner bit in a 5" or so square block of hardwood, to rest just over the lid as a lid stop. Then one can use more corn, which needs less tending. This is a problem like designing the paper feed in a copier, a career I'm grateful I don't have. If the masa is too wet, work in a bit of masa harina. Test by kneading by hand; it should be just shy of sticky, but not sticky. I bake harder than some say (I like brown specks and the resulting flavor) on a Baking Steel. I plan to experiment with an actual comal, which might breathe better as my masa is on the edge of too wet, like an artisanal bread dough. It puffs nicely. If one happens to have a VitaMix or VitaPrep commercial blender, one can get a reasonable approximation of this by blending corn with too much water, then thickening with masa harina. Masienda.com sells a masa harina from their white corn. Be aware that grind fineness is just one axis, and a VitaPrep can actually overdo this. One ends up 2:1 nixtamal:harina by dry weight, 2/3rds of the way there, with an inferior texture but much of the great flavor of different landrace corns. One will then decide a wet grinder is worth it.