Bread Atlas · Bread
Nixtamal Corn Tortillas
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
A quiet dish that lets its main ingredient speak: season well and stand aside.
Ingredients
- 1 kg dried field corn, white or blue dent
- 3 litres water
- 10 g food grade calcium hydroxide, cal
- 150-250 g warm water, for grinding
- 2 plastic sheets cut from a freezer bag, for the press
Equipment
Food processor
The skills inside
Tortillas on the comalSteaming: basket, leaf and lid
The words inside
Sieves: Chinois, Tamis & Food Mill
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rinse the corn, then bring it to the boil with the 3 litres of water and the cal, stirring as it heats; the water will turn yellow and feel slippery.
- Hold just below a simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the skin slips off a kernel rubbed between thumb and finger but the centre is still chalky and firm. Cut the heat and steep, covered, 8-14 hours. 20 min
- Drain and rub the corn hard through several changes of water until most of the hulls float away and the water runs almost clear. It should smell sweet and of corn, never soapy.
- Grind wet to a smooth masa in a mill or in batches in a food processor, adding warm water only as needed. It is right when a ball flattened between your palms does not crack at the edges.
- Press 30 g balls between the plastic sheets to 2 mm and cook on a comal at 220C (430F): 15 seconds, flip, 45 seconds, flip back, and it should dome and puff within 20 seconds.
- Stack them in a cloth lined basket straight off the comal so they steam each other and stay foldable.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.