Sunday, August 1, 2010

How to make tortillas


As I've posted before, I like to make Mexican rollups with my leftover roast chicken. But tortillas are pretty expensive to buy and have a long list of ingredients I don't want to eat, so I've been experimenting with making my own.

Here's a great recipe I found at Kitchen Stewardship, that uses the Nourishing Traditions idea of soaking your grains to break down phytates and make nutrients within the grain digestable. I've played with the Kitchen Stewardship recipe and discovered this recipe works fine either with butter or olive oil.

Ingredients
  • 2c stoneground whole-wheat flour
  • 1/4c butter, softened; or 1/4c olive oil
  • 1/2c water, at room temperature
  • 1T whey, natural yoghurt, milk kefir or lemon juice
  • 1t natural sea salt
Method
1. Put flour and butter or olive oil in a food processor and whiz until mixture looks like very fine breadcrumbs. 

2. Mix together water and whey. (For whey I use the runny liquid that rises to the top of my homemade yoghurt.)

3. Slowly add liquid to the food processor while the motor is running. Keep whizzing until ingredients are well combined, then tip out onto a clean bench and knead lightly for a few minutes.

4. Put mixture into a bowl, cover with a plate or clean tea towel and leave for 4-24 hours. (This gives the grains time to soak.)

5. After leaving your mixture to soak for 4-24 hours, sprinkle it with sea salt and knead it in. 

6. Divide the mixture into 8 balls. 


7. Roll out on a floured surface to the size you want. 

(Because of the time spent soaking, the mixture will be easy to roll. Be careful not to roll it too thin or it may rip when transporting to the frying pan.)

8. Heat an un-greased, heavy-bottomed pan on high and drop tortillas on it. Cook about 20 seconds, until lightly flecked with brown on one side, then flip and cook until brown spots appear on the other side. 

Serve immediately, or refrigerate or freeze in an airtight container. (This is when I add in my Mexican filling, roll up the tortillas and freeze them for later lunches.)



5 comments:

  1. I wasn't sure where to post this, but I just want to take a moment to thank you for your blog. I've been struggling with a need to eat healthily for a while now, but a sense that fresh fruit and vegetables were just too expensive, so I almost never bought them. See a problem here? Yeah, me too. Don't worry, I've changed my evil ways. Skimming over your blog has reminded me how delicious, easy and affordable real food can be. I'm excited about using your recipes and tips to experiment with new foods, and cook old ingredients in different ways. Thank you for making your knowledge available, and for inspiring me to keep going on this journey of healthy living.

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  2. Thank you for your lovely comment. It so encourages me to hear that from you. Good luck with your food journey. Sometimes I find it all too overwhelming as well, but then I remember that any effort I make at all is better than none. Do you have any room to plant a garden or grow veges in pots where you are? I also baulk at the cost of fruit and veges sometimes, which is a great motivator to get me out gardening.

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  3. Hi Emma, I'm going to try these tonight. Pete has bought "back up" wraps in case he doesn't like them, but I know they're going to be great. Cheers, Liz

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    1. Hey Liz, I love these tortillas so much more than store bought. I'd choose these ones every time. One thing I've changed since posting this is the cooking temperature. I usually cook for a bit longer on a medium heat to prevent burning. Have an experiment and let me know what works best for you because I think I should update it above.

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  4. I can report back that the wraps were very tasty and easy to make, thanks for the recipe Emma.

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