Thursday, June 3, 2010

Corn Tortilla Failure

Lest you think Betty Crapper is perfect, I will share my latest kitchen misadventure. I do not want my readers to be fooled into believing Betty Crapper's nick name was not appropriately earned.

I had a brilliant idea the other day: make homemade corn tortillas for chicken enchiladas. Too bad I failed miserably. I should have done my research. I did everything wrong, every single step of the way, and justified my nick name in the process.

Failure # 1:

Betty Crapper procured masa harina from the depths of her pantry. This masa was undeniably old, way past it's acceptable use by date.


Failure # 2:

Betty Crapper's dough was not moist enough. Notice the cracks in the balls of dough. Betty Crapper did not know they aren't supposed to be there.



Failure # 3

Betty Crapper rolled out her corn tortillas, thinking it would be as easy as making flour tortillas. The dough kept sticking to the pin and the counter no matter what she did. 


Failure # 4:

Betty Crapper cooked her frisbees tortillas too long and further dried them out.



Epic Fail:

Betty Crapper persevered. She should have stopped long, long before this point.


Betty Crapper is resilient. Failure will not stop her from attempting corn tortillas again. 

Lessons Learned on First Attempt
  • use fresh masa
  • dough must be consistency of playdoh
  • buy a tortilla press
Anyone have a Mexican grandma they can lend me? Suggestions for future success are much appreciated.

10 comments:

  1. lol!!! Too funny! Seems like tortillas would be hard to make anyway-I tried it once and didn't realize how long they would take...yeah I really need to learn to read the recipe before I dive in;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. lol
    Tortilla presses are cheap and well worth it. And when you do get one, remember to spray it with nonstick cooking spray. :o)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah! Just as spectacular as my first failure with homemade pasta! NOT a pretty sight! Thanks for stopping by my blog and your lovely comments! Have a wonderful weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Now you know :-). I admire your stick to it spirit. Thank you for the birthday wishes. I use pasteurized eggs and they represent no health threat. So, yes it is raw but pasteurization makes it O.K. Hugs and blessings...Mary

    ReplyDelete
  5. These do not look as delicious as your chocolate chip cookies! Better luck next time and thank you for sharing your learnings. I'm impressed you were making them from scratch in the first place!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey Betty! I just made these a couple weeks ago! I couple tips I would suggest (aside from your lessons learned) is to lay your dough ball between two pieces of plastic wrap. That way it won't stick to your rolling pin when you flatten it out. I also used the top of my blender to cut out nice looking circles so they looked all perty like.

    If you want to see mine, check out the daring kitchen button on my blog and scroll down to the enchilada challenge. Don't give up! Once you get the hang of them they're not that hard and they taste a million times better than store bought.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I want to thank you for sharing your attempt. This happens to me all the time when I try something new.

    I also want to thank you for the encouragement about baby books. I really want to get it together.

    ReplyDelete
  8. haha. I have a tortilla press. when I went to Mexico and saw that they all use presses, I knew it was a necessity. Love your blog title. Too funny.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Truth is, I can't make them either! I'm afraid of them.
    Sue

    ReplyDelete