How to make mexican food, the tortilla

    

Authentic Mexican Tacos

 In Mexico, corn consumption in form of tortillas has been part of our culture since ancestral times and it's the main component of Mexicans diet since centuries. A lot of people, chefs and restaurants in the world  are now trying to learn how to prepare Mexican food but, for being honest, they have nice approaches but they fail in the way of preparing it because they don't understand. How the tortilla is used?, How they can make it? or Why is so important?. It's a simple component but it's crucial to know how to manage it if you want to succeed making a Mexican Night with authentic food. 

First, we have to start with tortillas and here you'll learn something great - all the process to prepare your own corn dough from scratch. Also, I guarantee you that if you use your own dough the taste is going to be better and they are going to be more softer and flexible.

This recipe is traditional and historic because explains the process of "nixtamalización", which is a word in Náhuatl, the ancient Aztecs and other indigens language, nextli = ashes and tamali = dough so the meaning would be dough of ashes. 

This is a chemical process invented thousands of years ago which converts the corn into a healthy and complete food. The process consists in putting the corn kernels into water with lime, this process softens the corn, makes it easy to peel and gives a lot of properties to the corn.

This dough can be used to prepare tortillas, tostadas, totopos (nachos) and a lot of recipes that have corn as basic ingredient.

Corn made tortillas

About this recipe

Aztecs sharing meal

• It's easy to make but demands a lot of work, like almost all the mexican food
• For this recipee you'll need a corn mill
• You'll need lime, if it's possible purchase it in it's inactive chemical form
• The aproximate time is 13 hours because you'll need to leave all night the corn seeds inside the water
• This recipe is for 1/2 kgs of corn dough

Ingredients

Dried corn seeds

• 1/2 kgs of dried corn seeds

• 1 little spoon (1/2 oz) of lime in inactive chemical form.

Things that you'll need

Manual seeds mill

• 1 machine or mill to grind corn or seeds (for more info click here)
• 1 casserole with lid (for more info click here)
• 1 drainer (for more info click here)
• 1 strainer (for more info click here)
• 1 glass (250 ml)
• 1 spoon (2 oz)

Preparation Process

Clean the corn

Cleaned corn seeds

1. Clean the corn seeds to remove all the things that makes it ugly like little stones, insects, leafs or trash that you can find
2. Put the corn seeds in the drainer and clean them with fresh water
3. Put the drainer inside the casserole and cover them with water

The Cooking process

corn seeds cooking process

1. Fill 1/2 of the glass with water and put 1 little spoon (1 oz) of lime (calcium hydroxide) and if bubles are coming out wait until the bubbles stops. Important: This process is done to verify that the lime is inactive. If you see steam of bubbles it means that it is active, wait until the chemical reaction to finish transform the lime to inactive state.
2. Put the water with the lime, using the strainer, that you prepared and mix the ingredients
3. Boil the water at high heat
4. When the water is boiling reduce the intensity of the fire and leave the corn seeds cooking for 30 minutes until they get softer and move occasionally.
5. Turn of the fire, close the casserole and leave it 12 hours.

The next day...

Maiz Nixtamalizado

1. Verify that the corn seeds are softer and that you can peel them with just your fingers;if not leave the seeds more time. Do not leave the corn in the water for a longer time because they will become useles for the dough. This state of the corn is known as "comonixtamal" that would be "almost like the nixtamal"
2. Filter and clean the corn seeds with the strainer and fresh water. The liquid where the corn was cooked is known as "nejayote"
3. Peel the skin of all the corn seeds previously washed
4. Put the seeds in the mill
5. grind the corn seeds to get the dough

Tip. Is important to preserve the corn dough in a closed and hermetic recipient and leave it in a fresh and closed place.

Making the tortillas

Once you have the dough you can start using it to prepare tortillas totopos or tostadas here is a video of how to make "flour" tortillas which you can jump the process of preparing the "flour" because your tortillas are made of corn! they are better but the cooking process is the same. I'll make a video for that later but for now this one works well

I hope you can enjoy a good tortilla and eat just like our ancestors did thousands years ago, have a nice day and please leave comments or questions if you have some

Tortilla ancient preparation process

@luigitel180