The Discordian Way to Make Tortillas

Or, as it was formerly titled when Mama Liberty ran this at Sierra Times several years ago, The Great Tortilla–Making Caper. It is republished here at her request. It’s been lightly modified from that version.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, dear reader, I am into self-reliance. Not only did I write extensively about doing freedom once upon a time, I try to do it myself, in as much of my life as possible. What this means in the kitchen is that I prefer to do things from scratch as much as possible (short of butchering animals, so far). In my never-ending quest for good tasting, homemade foods, I decided to give tortilla-making a try. I’d read about it in my cooking magazines, seen a few recipes online, and figured it wouldn’t be all that difficult. That should’ve tipped me off right there.

I bought some masa at the local WalMart. It’s the same brand as is sold in Mexican supermarkets, so I felt pretty confident that if I simply followed the instructions, I’d have a decent result. After all, how much can go wrong when all you do is mix masa and water, roll it out, and cook it? Feeling confident, I even selected a nice ripe avocado to enjoy with the tortillas. (A common and absolutely divine Méxican snack is to wrap avocado slices in a warm tortilla, top with a dash of salt, roll up the tortilla, and enjoy.) I could almost taste it as I checked out ...

Saturday afternoon Lobo took our children on Vegabibble (for those of you who don’t speak Tiggerese, that’s “vegetable”) Patrol in our garden. I thought it’d be a good opportunity to try my hand with the tortilla–making—as I said before, they don’t sound difficult to make, but the timing is important and interruptions aren’t a good thing.

I read the instructions on the side of the bag of masa ... not entirely grammatical, but not nearly as bad as some translations from Asian languages to English I’ve seen. The stuff came together rather like a very thick paste, but not nearly as gummy as wheat-flour concoctions.

Wanting to be authentic, and having read that many women still simply clap the tortilla dough back and forth in their hands to form the tortillas, I tried that first. Ha! The result was an uneven, smallish mass that at its thinnest was much too thick to be a decent tortilla. Not having gluten formation to worry about, I wadded it back up in a ball to start again.

Meanwhile, I’d begun heating my cooking surface—my beloved, trusty cast iron skillet. The instructions called for a temperature of between 440–480°F, which seemed very hot to me. Not having a good way to test the temp of a dry surface, I simply turned the burner to high (no, I didn’t turn the hood fan on at the same time) and let the skillet heat.

Back to the tortilla shaping ... I started on another one by hand, but when I saw my skillet begin to smoke I decided I’d need a quicker method, and next time I could play peasant woman in earnest. The instructions also suggested using a rolling pin to make them. I fished mine out and set to rolling ...

Except that even between sheets of waxed paper, the damn stuff wanted to stick! How something that dry could still stick I just don’t know. Even so, I managed to roll one out, and tossed it onto the very hot skillet ... which had begun smoking from below. Just a bit of food below the pan, I told myself, and concentrated on turning the tortilla, which was not nicely round but shaped rather like England—with a huge crack separating Wales.

Trying to roll out another one while tending to the one in the skillet was an excellent study in divided attention. If I ever go back into psychological research, I’ll have a great real–world task to use. Just as I got ready to try to separate another small-scale version of England (with Wales a little more securely attached this time) from the waxed paper—of which the dough had apparently become quite fond over their short time together— the tortilla in the skillet was puffing—a sign of a tortilla successfully cooked, according to my sources. Yes! I thought as I placed it onto a plate to cool, and dropped the next into the skillet, which still had smoke wafting from below. What could still be burning down there? I wondered, as I set to rolling out another map of England.

After several iterations of tending near-burning tortillas and trying to persuade Wales to stay attached to England, I began to feel I was getting the hang of it all—except that the tortillas weren’t puffing up any more, and were definitely getting blacker around the edges than is strictly authentic. As I turned the heat down, I noticed that the smoking below the skillet had stopped. Without that distraction, I concentrated on doing my best to stop producing edible maps of England and shaping tortillas into rounds. The nearest I came were varying likenesses of Australia.

At last, the final tortilla emerged from the pan. I turned the burner off, leaving the pan sitting on it as there is little room in our minuscule kitchen to safely put an object that hot. As I began to clean up the mess from the project, I noticed that the skillet looked very dry. What a great time to season it, I thought. I fetched the vegetable oil and poured a generous amount in the skillet, which I had pulled off the burner a bit in order to have it closer to me.

The oil immediately began to boil and vaporize. I moved the skillet completely off the burner, then swirled the oil to coat the bottom of the pan. I then moved it back onto the burner, ostensibly to let the oil soak into the iron as I finished other cleanups.

The oil had other ideas, however. It burst into flame. My first kitchen fire—cool! I watched as the flames danced higher, thinking, I can see how something like this could start a house fire. As my flames began to approach the hood, I decided I didn’t want to see a house fire today, and reached for the salt to douse the fire. When the flames were out—the oil and salt still burning into a crusted mess inside my skillet—I noticed the cloud of quite dark smoke clinging to the ceiling of the kitchen, and spreading into the living room.

Just as I turned on the fan, the rest of the family returned. Lobo calmly asked, “Were you aware that there’s a large cloud of smoke in the living room?” I replied with equal calm, “Yes. Would you like a tortilla?” Amazingly, he said yes.

Lobo says the tortilla–making was a successful experiment. Ever the perfectionist, I’m not so sure. My cast iron skillet is still sulking: not only was the inside ruined, the bottom was thoroughly burned from the prolonged high heat. I’ve bathed its bottom and inside with oil and even as I type, have it ensconced in a warm oven—the cast iron version of a bubble bath, I presume.

Even though they’re a little chewy in spots and burnt in others, the tortillas are a decent approximation of the genuine article. And I’ve decided that before I try again, I’m going to get a tortilla press! Being authentic is for artisans, and those who have no sense or money.


Addendum: On one of his first trips back to México, Lobo bought a tortilla press for me. Even though we toted that bag of masa around for years, I have yet to undertake another tortilla making experiment. No doubt my first foray is part of my reluctance—but I’m sure it hasn’t helped that any time I do something smoke–producing in the kitchen, Lobo asks me, “Making tortillas?”