The Best Tortillas You Can Make at Home

Hi, I am Saul Montiel.

I'm a professional chef,

and today, I'm making flour tortillas.

I'm gonna show you how to make flour tortillas

buttery, fluffy, tender, warm, delicious.

This is flour tortillas 101.

Making flour tortillas is one

of the easiest simple things to do,

and these are the ingredients that you have on your kitchen,

so there is no excuses for you to do this flour tortilla.

They're so simple, so good, so delicious, and so fresh.

Let's do this.

So when making my flour tortillas,

I'm gonna use two cups of all purpose flour,

a little bit of salt, and I'm gonna add some butter.

And the reason why I use butter

is because the butter adds some sweetness

to the flour tortilla.

If I use lard, it will be more on the savory side.

I prefer little sweet flour tortillas

and that's one of the reasons why I use butter.

The main thing has to be very soft, like almost creamy,

so it would be easier for you to whip.

The texture needs to be very similar to shortening,

like this, very spreadable.

And what we want on the dough is we want a smooth dough.

If you use cold butter, it's going to be harder to mix.

So you need to make sure we incorporate

the flour with the butter.

We don't wanna see no little spots of butter into this mix.

So what I'm doing right now,

I'm making sure I dissolve all the butter,

so it'll be easier to mix with the water.

This takes a little patience,

and that's something that sometimes I don't have.

Now, I'm gonna add the water little by little.

Your water has to be warm

because that's gonna help the gluten rise faster.

So using warm water,

it will make a nice fluffy tortilla without being too dry.

Little by little,

I'm actually controlling the texture of the dough.

I want you to feel the consistency on your fingers.

The texture right now is pretty dry.

When do you know your dough is ready?

It is when you don't see any flour

around your bowl, on your hands.

So see right now, it's a little bit sticky.

That's not ready yet.

If it feels too wet,

you can keep mixing it till you get more elastic dough,

or you can add a little bit of flour.

But in this case, I think I'm gonna keep working it,

the dough.

It's been three minutes,

and I'm already out of breath.

This is what I'm talking about.

When you get to this point,

that means that you're very close to the end.

So now we're just gonna put it here,

and we're going to work this dough

like if you're makin' a pizza,

'cause we have to make sure we incorporate all the butter

and also the gluten starts working.

Look at my hands, they're almost clean

and the dough doesn't stick to my hands,

so this is almost done.

How do you know your dough is ready?

When you have a very smooth surface.

I can see that it is not smooth enough,

so we're gonna do another three minutes.

And also, when it's not sticky.

And we want this elastic dough.

You see how it broke right here?

So we wanna work this dough a little bit more

'cause we have to make sure we incorporate all the butter

and also the gluten starts working and resting.

We did this for almost 10 minutes, right.

So now, one way to find out if your dough is ready,

I'm just gonna press.

And if it bounces out, that means it's ready.

Now, I'm gonna put it in this bowl.

I'm gonna let it rest for 10 minutes,

and I'm covering it with a towel so it doesn't dry out,

'cause if it dries out and then you stretch it,

it will break the crust.

So we don't want a flakey tortilla.

When cooking flour tortillas,

I prefer to use a cast iron grill because it's thicker,

so it holds heat for a longer period of time

and also the heat spreads around evenly.

You can use a cast iron skillet and it will do the work

or any heavy, thicker bottom pan that can hold the heat.

Before we start working with the dough,

we're gonna make sure your grill is medium heat,

and we're gonna add some neutral oil.

And we're gonna get a dry towel,

and we just going to wipe it a little bit.

Now, I'm going to shape the tortillas.

We're gonna cut this in half, in quarters,

so basically, we cut this in even portions.

Basically, I use this part of my hand

kind of to push it and then bring it back,

push it, bring it back.

But now, we do it faster speed.

I'm gonna do once again, push it back.

We don't want to overwork the dough

because it's gonna be very hard to stretch.

Now it's time to roll them up.

Now let's do a little bit of flour.

It's going to prevent it from sticking to the dough.

Okay, so it looks like

we have probably two ounces of tortillas, right,

so we're gonna make this into 7 tortilla.

You want to have a perfect circle, like this ones.

Just start pressing it from the middle.

There's a line here, there's a line here.

I just go there,

and then I flip it and do the same thing.

The reason why I flip it is

because I want to make sure it's spread evenly.

Now if you do this all the way there,

so you will have a very thin edge

and when you cook it, you will burn it.

The thickness of the tortilla is going to decide for

how long you're going to cook it on each side.

The thinner, the faster,

the thicker, the longer.

When do you know it's ready to turn this tortilla?

When you start seein' the top a little bit more dry

and also more bubbles.

It might look like I'm overworking the dough,

but I'm not putting a lot of pressure.

I'm just spreading the tortilla.

If I put a lot of pressure, it won't be as good.

I think this one is ready, looks good.

I don't wanna overcook it because I don't want it to be dry,

right, and I want this to be elastic.

Well, this is how my grandma used to do it.

She will grab one of these tortillas,

and then if we come back to normal, that means it was right.

So that was a quality control from her side.

We want to keep them nice and warm

'cause that's going to help with the elasticity.

If you just leave it like that

with nothing, with no love,

they're gonna get dried out.

They're gonna get cold really fast,

and they're gonna be tough to eat.

Let's say that you don't have

a nice beautiful roller like me.

Gonna use it by hand.

Again, from the center to the sides, see.

It's gonna take a little longer,

but just don't want you to have excuses

for you not to make tortillas.

Now we're gonna do some pizza techniques.

Then you stretch it.

Guys, there's no excuses, right.

Let's make these tortillas.

With rolling pin or without rolling pin.

See, this tortilla is yelling me,

Turn me around, turn me around.

There's too many bubbles.

You see bubbles, that means it's ready.

The best part of making tortillas is tasting them.

Let's try them.

Oh, they're nice and warm.

This is how my grandma used to do it.

She used to put salt, and then you roll it up,

Mm mm.

They're buttery, tender.

It's the perfect tortilla to put anything you want,

just avocados, salsa.

This tortilla won't overpower any other ingredient

that you might put in here,

so it has the perfect balance of the flour and the butter.

Beautiful, nice and warm, soft.

The trick, it works perfectly.

I can see they're nice and tender.

So this is what I was telling you,

they need to be a little elastic, right,

'cause you're gonna roll this up.

You can, this can easily become a chimichanga,

put ground meat, cheese, whatever you might need.

You fold it that way, and there you have it,

a chimichanga,

a burrito,

a taco,

a quesadilla.

The best thing, just eat 'em.

You should be making flour tortillas.

Those ingredients, you have it on your kitchen.

You have butter, you have flour,

you have salt, you have water.

There's no excuses.