Recipe #51 - Flour Tortillas

This is Part 4 of 4 of my insanely busy day where I attempted to be a domestic goddess.  Dinner may have ended up delicious, but Mom was a grump, the kitchen was a disaster, and I ate my dinner while walking out the door for the evening.  And this recipe was the straw that broke the camel's back.

You can find it one page 37 and online here.

First you mix together the flour and salt.  Then add the shortening and combine until it is crumbly.

While the mixer is running, slowly add the hot water.

The dough will be about the consistency of Play-Doh.

Preheat your pan while you start working on rolling the tortillas.  You start by dividing the dough into 8-10 even balls.

Then you roll them one at a time into a circle.  Here is where my frustration began.  I really wanted my circles to be nice and pretty.  Well they weren't.  I knew that I could roll out the dough and use a plate as my template to cut a perfect circle.  But frankly, I just didn't have time and I knew that the tortillas were going to taste the same no matter what shape they were in.

The perfectionist in me couldn't let it go, but the clock was ticking.  I just got more and more frustrated as I cooked these lumpy circles.  So before you even start, you need to make up your mind on one thing:  Do you care if these are perfect circles?  If you do, be sure to give yourself more time to make them and you'll be fine.

You roll one dough ball out at a time into a perfectly ugly circle-wannabe.

When you peel it up off the counter, it becomes even less circular as you toss it into your heated pan.

Cook until it starts to bubble up (about a minute) and then flip it.

It only takes about 30 seconds on the other side.

Now this was the point where the table wasn't set, the chicken needed to come off the grill, all the taco fixings were still in the fridge, and my husband still wasn't home from work.  The little piece of my mind that wasn't lost yet, suddenly vanished into thin air.

I was lucky to snap a couple more pictures as I made the remaining 10 tortillas, but I refused to take photos as they got progressively uglier.  Grumpy, grumpy cook in the kitchen!

My batch made 10 regular sized tortillas, but my kids were already eating them when I took this picture.

We filled them with sliced cabbage (coleslaw mix), grilled taco chicken, pico de gallo, guacamole, and a sprinkle of cheese.

After I took this picture, I rolled up my taco in a paper towel and ate it on my way to the church.  Totally made a mess in the car and picked up several pieces of cabbage and tomato off the floor inside the church.  Please take the time to enjoy this dish at the kitchen table with your family.  It really is fantastic, and these tortillas are so much better than store bought ones.

Take a chill pill before you make them.  They aren't terribly hard.  They don't require a lot of ingredients, and they should be much less frustrating if you make them on a more relaxed day.  Learn from the madness that I call my life.