The tortilla press: when a kitchen gadget becomes a tool

Recently I caught the 'make your own tortilla' bug from reading Mary's posts over at Barefeet in the Kitchen.  She's been making whole wheat tortillas and then turning them into delicious quesadillas.  

I decided to try corn tortillas, since they're my favorite.  Before I even looked at a recipe I went out and grabbed some white and yellow corn meal. Then I noticed corn flour and I picked up some of that, too.  At home I already had grits and polenta.  After I gathered them all together on the counter I was a little puzzled that I couldn't find a basic recipe for tortillas on any of the packages.  

Then I looked online and realized that you make corn tortillas from masa harina, a Latin American dried corn dough, made from corn treated with lime.  So I went back out to get some of that.  It can sometimes be hard to find, but most grocery stores have it somewhere, just ask.  The minute I opened the package I knew it was the right stuff.  It has a distinctive aroma---you'll be instantly transported back to your last great meal in a Mexican restaurant.

The good news is, once you have the masa harina, you can make homemade corn tortillas any time you want because the only other ingredient you need is plain old water.  That's my kind of recipe.

I mixed up a dough of 2 cups masa harina and 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups warm water in a bowl and let it rest for about 20 minutes.  Simple enough.
Then I broke off golf ball sized pieces of dough and tried to roll them out into thin rounds between sheets of plastic wrap.  Not so simple.   I couldn't get them thin or round.  And I couldn't get them off the plastic wrap.  It was sticky.  It was crumbly.  It was a messy disaster.
Not quite what I was after.

Fail!

So I did a little research and quickly realized that anyone in the know knows that you need a tortilla press to make corn tortillas.  So I popped out to buy one.  After a few false starts; Macy's didn't have one, Target didn't either, I found one at a kitchen supply outlet.   Right next to the press was a package of waxed paper squares...I got them too.

It turns out that a tortilla press is one of the least expensive kitchen toys out there.  You can't find an expensive one if you try.  I bought the Norpro Deluxe press for $12.95.

I wasn't overly hopeful since most of my kitchen gadgets get used once or twice and then shoved to the back of a cabinet before being sold at the next yardsale.  Like my spiral apple slicer/corer, my yogurt maker, panini press and wine aerator. 

I'm happy to report that with the tortilla press we have a winner.  It's not only cheap, but it does a job you can't do by hand, and it's easy to clean and store. The very definition of a kitchen tool.  Think about it--- nobody calls a spatula or a vegetable peeler a gadget.  

Below I've demonstrated the simple steps to making a perfect tortilla with the press---

 

You have to be careful, though, it's a slippery slope from gadget shopping to gadget bender.  I almost came home with an electric milk frother, an automatic brownie baker, and a plastic thingy that makes  French toast look like the Eiffel Tower. I guess that's why kitchen gadgets populate so many late night infomercials. It's downright tempting to think you could split a mango without any muss or fuss.  

There's a thin line between kitchen tool and kitchen rip-off, and I think I've found it.
Happy tortilla making!