love tacos but you cannot have a good taco without a good tortilla and a good tortilla

is a homemade tortilla. So I’m going to show you how to do it.

[music]

[How To Make Tortillas]

>> Hilah: OK. Oww! Damn it. OK! Let’s talk tortillas. Let’s get serious about it. There

are only five ingredients. There’s flour and baking powder and salt and oil and milk.

So let’s start with the flour. Two cups of all-purpose flour. I use my finger when

I measure things like so. And number two. All right. This is our second cup of flour.

OK. Done. Almost. One and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Flour tortillas are pretty

new by the way because I guess the Europeans just brought flour over like 500 years ago

or something so by ancient human standards, flour tortillas are New Kids on the Block

so to speak.

All right. A little salt and mix it up. OK, now I’m adding milk and oil. OK. Mix it

up. Okey doke. That is it for the easy part. Now I’m going to knead it for two minutes.

That means check your watch and do it for a few minutes or count to 120 Mississippis.

Learned that trick in kindergarten.

All right. So you throw a little flour down and you probably need to add flour as you

go and you pull out your little squishy ball. This is all kneading is, is folding and squishing.

Almost done. Gosh, really hard work being a homemaker and making tortillas. OK, just

kidding.

All right. This is good. It’s soft and pliable and fun. I’m going to put it in this bowl

and I’m going to cover it with a damp towel and set it aside to rest for 20 or 30 minutes.

I’m going to go for 30.

OK, compadres. We have now reached the second leg of our tortilla journey. I’m going to

take this dough. I’m going to separate it into evenly-sized balls. Probably get like

10 out of this little mass here. Maybe 12 if you want to be chancy with it.

It’s really fun. It feels like Play-Doh. Yay! How to make one shaped like an H. OK.

So just roll each one into a little – crappy little ball there and you put them on a plate

and then we’re going to let them rest for another 10 minutes, which will give you plenty

of time to go take like five tequila shots or wash this bowl, which is probably what

I will do.

OK. Set those aside for 10 minutes. See you later. So I’ve been waiting patiently and

now I’m ready to roll my little balls out into little discs and this is really fun.

OK. So get some flour on your board or your counter and your rolling pin, doing those

jobbies [0:04:40] [Phonetic], one of those jobbies [Phonetic]. OK.

On your little balls, flatten it out. This is totally fun. I don’t know why people

don’t do this everyday. I guess some people probably do. OK. Let me just start rolling

it out and then start in the middle and kind of press out to the sides until it’s about

the size of what a tortilla should be.

OK. Cool. Let me set that one aside. OK. I got my little tortilla babies all rolled out

and I have a cast iron skillet heating up over high for a couple of minutes to get it

super, duper hot. No oil or anything, just a dry skillet and I’m going to throw one

of these in and let it sit there for a couple of minutes. And it will start to puff up and

then I will flip it and then let it cook on that side and then we will have hot, fresh

tortillas.

So it’s getting really, really puffed up. It’s pretty cool. I’m going to take a

little gander. That looks great. And flip it and if there’s a big old air bubble,

just kind of pop it but look out for the steam because it’s super, super hot, super fudging

hot.

And let it go for a couple of minutes on that side and it should have some little crispy

brown, golden toasty stuff on it and that my friends is a tortilla and there you have

it, internet people, homemade tortillas. Hmm, so much better than anything you can buy in

a store including a big screen TV.

All right. That’s it for tortillas. We’re working on a very special secret new project.

So if you want to be fully involved in that, sign up for the newsletter and practice making

yourself some tortillas because you’re going to need to know how to do that. All right.

[music]