ICNC Sunday School

TORTILLA TUTORIAL

First Things First

1. You Need A Frying Pan

In Mesoamerican cultures, tortillas are commonly prepared on a piece of cookware called a comal, which can be made of clay, or other materials, like iron. For the people who do not own a comal, a properly seasoned cast iron frying pan is an excellent choice of cookware for making tortillas. For those who don’t know, a “seasoned” cast iron pan is one which has had its cooking surface coated in multiple layers of polymerized oil to create a natural, nontoxic, nonstick cooking surface. This process, called seasoning, is detailed in our Cast Iron Cookware Care article. Making sure your pan is well seasoned is crucial so your tortillas don’t stick to the ungreased pan when cooking at high temperatures!

A flattop iron griddle works well too, but most people don’t have one. Carbon steel cookware, properly seasoned, will also work well for making tortillas, and may even be superior to cast iron in certain respects. But there’s no need to be extra fancy; cast iron frying pans are relatively affordable and easy to come by, and are far superior to most other common kitchen cookware.

Don’t use non-stick cookware. It can leach toxic synthetic compounds into your food. Other cookware materials like enameled cast iron and stainless steel will be more difficult to work with when making tortillas since these surfaces can’t be seasoned the same way, which will make the tortillas stick to the pan more easily when cooking. And avoid aluminum cookware, because of its toxic properties.

Things you will need:

Cast-iron frying pan

You need to season your cast iron. This is a crucial step!

If you don’t have a tortilla press, use two flat surfaces – like a baking pan on the bottom, and a small cutting board for the top.

The layers of thin plastic are really helpful. What works best is a very thin, strong plastic like a plastic shopping bag, cut into circles, as shown in the videos above. We all know single-use plastic is a scourge on the planet, but it works really well for this job, and in this usage, the plastic is reusable. You can reuse these same little pieces of plastic many times. Just take a close look at the plastic every time you’re using it to make sure it’s holding up nicely and not disintegrating, so you know it’s not shedding bits of plastic into your tortilla. As we continue to phase out toxic synthetic-based plastics from our lives, this little feature of tortilla making will be a frontier for innovation. Stay tuned for developments.

The technique of releasing the dough (masa) from the plastic, onto the hand, then placing evenly it on the pan/griddle can be tricky.

If you’re having a hard time removing the dough intact from the plastic sheets, you can try loosening it by delicately removing the top layer, laying it back on the dough loosely, flipping it over (with the plastic still on both sides) and un-sticking the other layer of plastic. The piece that’s now on the bottom should be easier to remove.

Rick Bayless and Jorge Gaviria make releasing the tortilla and transferring it to the cooking surface look easy. They do it one-handed, but I usually use two hands, and rather than smoothly lay it down, which I find difficult, I drop it down from a short distance above the pan, trying to get it to land flat on the cooking surface.

Stove Pan Temperatures

Low heat (slow cooking)	200–300°F
Medium heat (frying)	300–400°F
High heat (searing)	400–600°F

To make tortillas you need to get your pan up to a high temperature. Somewhere around 425°F is good. Jorge Gaviria says traditional wood-fired comales in Mexico typically reach 650-700°F, but you don’t need to get your pan this hot to make tortillas at home.