Making healthy homemade tortillas

Nowadays, it seems like everything we grew up with, from video games to flour tortillas, suddenly needs to have some kind of a warning label. Fortunately, with a little substitution, you can have healthy homemade tortillas that don’t lose any flavor and, more importantly, don’t have the white flour and lard that the traditional flour tortillas of the past contained. By replacing these typically used ingredients, you can you keep your family healthy and help satisfy the nutrition essentials your family needs.

Ingredients for healthy homemade tortillas

– 3 cups whole wheat flour (check the ingredients to make sure it’s real whole wheat flour–if it lists “enriched flour,” you’re just getting fancy white flour)
– 1/2 cup canola oil (vegetable oil is OK too)
– 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
– 1 teaspoon salt
– 1 cup hot water (as hot as you can handle without burning yourself)

Preparation for healthy homemade tortillas

Mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Add oil and mix with your hands until your mixture looks like crumbles. A little at a time, add hot water and mix with your hands to create dough. Depending on your mixture, you may need to add a little more water if it’s still too crumbly, or a little more flour if it’s too sticky.

When the dough is the right consistency (it forms into a ball), pinch off the dough into 12 equal balls (roughly the size of a golf ball). One at a time, roll out a ball on a floured surface, shake off the loose flour, and cook it on a hot, ungreased griddle.

You’ll know it’s time to flip your healthy homemade tortillas on the griddle when they start to bubble up. Be careful not to burst the bubbles–they’re filled with steam and can burn. The good thing about these tortillas is that you can flip them as many times as you want–they’re not like pancakes that can fall apart and get ruined if turned too soon.

The heat of the griddle depends on your experience; if this is your first time, keep the flame low to medium; that way, the griddle won’t overheat while you’re struggling to roll out a decent-shaped tortilla. Once you get a rhythm going, you can adjust the griddle flame to cook healthy homemade tortillas while you’re rolling them out like a pro.

Don’t be discouraged if your first attempts at tortillas create amoeba-shaped disks–it takes patience and practice to make perfectly round healthy homemade tortillas. To make a complete meal, check out some other delicious recipe ideas.

Photo source: PhotoXpress