**Making Authentic Tortillas from Scratch**

As we continue our culinary journey, today we're going to tackle one of the most fundamental components of Mexican cuisine: tortillas. These soft, pliable disks are the backbone of tacos, burritos, and countless other dishes, and yet they can be intimidating to make from scratch. But fear not, dear readers, for with a little practice and patience, you'll be crafting authentic, delicious tortillas like a pro.

To begin, we need to start with the dough. We're using a simple recipe that involves mixing together flour, water, and a pinch of salt. The key here is to get the right consistency – not too sticky, not too dry. If it's too wet, add a little more flour; if it's too dry, add a bit more water. I find that using a bench flour helps to achieve this perfect balance. Once we've got our dough mixed up, we can start kneading. This is where the magic happens – as we knead, we're developing the gluten in the dough, which gives tortillas their characteristic chewiness.

Now, let's talk about the rolling process. This is where most people get stuck, but trust me, it's easier than you think. We want to roll our dough out into a smooth, even disk – not too thin, not too thick. The ideal thickness will depend on the type of tortilla you're making; for tacos, we'll aim for something around 8 inches in diameter and about 1/16 inch thick. To achieve this, we'll use a combination of rolling and folding techniques. We'll roll out the dough to our desired size, then fold it over onto itself several times to create layers. This helps to even out the thickness and prevents the tortilla from becoming too dense.

Once we've got our rolled-out tortillas, it's time to heat up our griddle. I'm using a carbon steel griddle for this recipe, but you can also use a cast iron pan if that's what you have on hand. We want to get the griddle nice and hot – around 400°F – before we start cooking our tortillas. While the griddle is heating up, we can quickly flour our rolling pin and any other surfaces that might get sticky. Then, it's time to roll out a few of our tortilla dough balls into smooth disks.

We'll place each disk onto the griddle and cook for about 30 seconds on each side, or until they're lightly browned and have developed a nice sheen. The key here is not to overcook them – we want them to still be slightly soft in the center. Once they're done, we can remove them from the heat and let them steam for a few minutes before assembling our tacos.

As we assemble our tacos, I want to emphasize that tortillas don't have to be perfect. In fact, some of the most authentic tortillas are thicker and more rustic than what you might find in a store. The beauty of making your own tortillas is that you can experiment with different sizes, shapes, and textures until you find one that works for you.

And now, let's talk about the secret to making truly exceptional carnitas. I'm using a combination of pork shoulder and skin – yes, you read that right! By cooking the pork in its own fat, we're able to create those tender, juicy morsels that are the hallmark of Mexican cuisine. Once the pork is cooked, we'll shred it and mix it with some lime juice, onion, and cilantro.

As I chop up our carnitas into smaller pieces, I'm reminded of an important rule: you never want to overmix your meat. This can make it tough and dense – the opposite of what we're going for here. By leaving a few large chunks intact, we'll create a delightful texture contrast in our tacos.

Finally, let's talk about adding flavor to our tortillas. I'm using a little something called "lar" – essentially just a mixture of lard and spices that adds depth and richness to our tortillas. You can experiment with different combinations to find one that you love.

And there we have it – two perfectly delicious tacos, each one packed with flavor and texture. Whether you're a seasoned foodie or just starting out on your culinary journey, making authentic tortillas from scratch is an experience you won't want to miss.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhen you think of Mexican meats and Tacos the first thing most people think about is carnitas traditionally various tough cuts of pork cooked in copper pots in its own fat if you were in France you'd call this technique pork Ki and it's one of the best if not the greatest Taco on Earth so this video is going to break down into three parts making the Carnitas making flour tortillas and a salsa ver to go with it all before we jump into it why don't you give a like to the Superman curl it's out today which means we're going to make some something delicious and of course it starts with pork here I have the Copa roast from Porter Road one of my favorite sources for me and actually the sponsor of this video now the Copa roast is just a collection of muscles that is cut from the pork shoulder sort of like the best parts of the pork shoulder now picnic roast a pork butt something like that will work fine and if you can get one with the skin on you should definitely use that cut the skin off and add that to the pork and at the end crisp it up until it's crackly and beautiful to make some chichon that can go right on top but this is a unique cut barbecue people would call this part right here the money musle that's the prized part of the pork butt now this pork butt doesn't have skin so we're not going to use it but I do have some skin left over so maybe we'll throw that on top at the end basically what I want to do is cut this into about 2 to 3 in chunks you want them cut into bigger pieces so they don't dry out when we go to fry them at the end so I'm going to cut this whole piece in half and then just cut them into s sort of big cubes and then we just want to lay them out and make sure we salt them heavily meats are prepped now I've seen all sorts of things put into Carnitas Citrus spices aromatics Coke evaporated milk salt water but this is a very old recipe so I like to imagine how they would be making it back then and I don't think they'd be using Coke and evaporated milk and so while you can use any and all of those things all you really need is pork salt and lar or monka it's much like Duck Ki duck that's slowly cooked in its own duck fat and then crisped up later so we're going to add a whole vat of this into a nice heavy bottomed Dutch oven so we're going to want to start on high heat and then we're going to add all of that lard to the pot then I'm going to reserve about 1/3 cup of that lard to make our tortillas later we're going to melt it down get it up to a frying temperature once it's hot we can carefully add in the pork to the hot oil and allow it to fry don't touch it for at least 5 6 7 minutes then you can give them a flip carefully rotate them around until all the meat is beautifully seared it should take about 20 minutes then we're going to turn the heat off place a lid on it put it in a 250° oven for 2 hours now you know me I care about great ingredients and to make great Carnitas you're going to need a great piece of meat and if you're not happy with your meat supplier you're going to have to check out our sponsor today Porter Ro now first off I've loved Porter Road for years long before we were ordering all our groceries online for Co and long before they've sponsored this channel to say it simply this company impressed me Porto road is an online butcher shop that delivers highquality meat directly to your door they offer a wide variety of dry-aged beef pork chicken including rare butcher cuts that actually have flavor and honestly I don't know what it is but every steak I've had from them has been the beefiest flavored steak I've ever had they work with trusted local farmers who raise animals the right way humanely on pastures with no added hormones or antibiotics and they dry age all beef and hand cut each Steak and Chop just to produce Cuts you won't find in a grocery store what I love most about Porter Road is that it feels like a local butcher shop years ago I actually requested that they offer thicker cut steaks and like 2 months later they were offering extra thick cut steak they also offer subscriptions and Steaks and Chops always arrive fresh never Frozen and I'm going to save you cash because Porter Road is offering my audience 15% off their first order just go down and click the link in the description and the promotion will automatically be applied to your order so now that pork is working gives us time to work on our flow tortillas and it's ridiculously simple unlike my attempt at corn tortillas a few months back here I've got 2 and 3/4 cups of allpurpose flour and I'm going to add that straight into a food processor then I've got 3/4 of a cup of water that goes in in I have that third cup of lard get that in there and then a few pinches of salt that's it the top on and then we're literally just going to run it until the ball forms all by itself takes like 10 seconds then I got some bench flour here just going to hit the board and get that onto a little bit of flour I'm just going to knead it together until it's a nice homogeneous ball then we're going to get it kind of squash it down a little bit we're going to cut it in half cut each half in half then cut those half in half we're going to cut those in half but obviously one Edge is tapered so I'm just going to kind of favor one side and those end up being equal size balls roll those into balls I mean is that the best way to portion out balls I don't know but it gets the job done you just roll these into a rough ball we're going to allow them to sit for about 30 minutes to kind of relax let that gluten calm down and then we're going to be able to roll these out into like very thin tortillas and they don't have to all be equally sized brust stick is nice here I'm to get them onto a sheet tray just going to place a damp paper towel over it along with a little towel and I'm just going to set that off to the side for about 30 minutes next up a good taco needs a great salsa and you can use whatever you'd like my personal favorite is a salsa ver or a green salsa there's many different green Salsas the one we're making is a ttio based salsa now I got some beautiful ones you want to look for a nice husk around them that's nice and kind of fresh and then you just want to pull that off and you're going to see the ttio inside that has a little bit of a sticky film on it that we just need to rinse off easy peasy we going to get the husks off give them a rinse and then give everything a quick chop we're going to fry them off in some oil before turning it into salsa first up we just want to cut these in half this what the inside looks like it's not a green tomato then we need an onion but I don't need too much I'm just going to cut a little cheek off the edge then I'm just going to cut that into these little wedges then two jalapenos I'm just going to cut the edges off toss that so I'm just going to fry the onions the jalapeno and the garlic together those are get cooked first and then I can fry up the tonos now in a pan on medium high heat I'm going to coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil and then I'm going to add in the jalapenos the garlic and the onion and I really just want to char those on all sides can tell the jalapeno Skin's blistered and brown so I can get those into a little Neutra bullet or a small blender first let those onions and garlic keep cooking and when they're brown add them to the blender then I'm going to add a little bit more oil and then Ino the tamao cutsside down we're going to let those cook and sear on that first side and then give them a flip and let them cook for another minute on that other side and then we're going to take a little bit of water we're going to add that into the pan to Del glaze the pan while also steam finishing the tomatillos after they cook for a few minutes we to kill the heat add the Tomos into the blender along with just a little bit of that cooking liquid just enough to get the salsa processing maybe a little less than halfway now we can finish it off we just need a little bit of cilantro I'm just going to tear some just like that the juice of two limes this is a rich fatty dish so I want to kind of make this salsa very acidic to cut through all that richness and fat and then I have a little chicken bullion Cube I'm going to just put a half of that in there and then salsa needs salt if you ever make a salsa and it's just kind of not hitting the way you want it it's probably cuz you don't have enough salt the lid on and then we're just going to puree then just blend it to your desired consistency I like it a little bit smoother on the thick side that tastes money as it cools down it's going to develop even more so we're going to let that kind of chill off to the side while we're here one of the other things we going to need is a little bit of diced cilantro and onion now always when you do a little cilantro onion topping on a Taco you want to use a white onion they're just not as kind of pungent and strong raw making them perfect to kind of top on tacos I just want to cut this into like a small dice then get them into a bowl then we can take our cilantro and just roughly chop it put that into the bowl and then mix the two together you want about the same amount of cilantro in there as you do onion now we can set that off to the side until we're ready now back to our tortillas see now they're a lot softer easier to kind of form into a nice smooth ball without any creases I'll just go through and roll them again one more time and then I have my carbon steel griddle heating up we want to get it around 400° you can use a cast iron pan as well I got my bench flour throw some on there I got my rolling pen I'm going to flour that as well then we going to take one of the balls I'm going to place it down and I'm just going to use this part of my thumb to just flatten it out into a circle just like that make sure each side is nicely flowed and then just like I would roll out a sheet of pasta I'm going to push forward One Way rotate push forward rotate push forward then you want to roll it out as thin as you can and as circular as you can not all tortillas need to be tiny a lot of authentic tortillas in Mexico are actually larger for tacos just like that about an 8 in Taco then we're going to lightly grease The Griddle and then straight onto the griddle with that tortilla and we're not going to touch it and we're going to allow it to cook there for a few minutes while it steams and Bubbles from the inside then we can give it a flip and it should be lightly browned on that first side and then continue to inflate check the underside it's lightly brown the same way as the top that's perfect we can get that into a little bowl with a towel to keep them insulated and Steam while we roll out the rest of the tortillas and cook them just the same way they're pretty straightforward you shouldn't have too much issue with them and they should be be insanely delicious now we've got 9 minutes left on our 2hour timer and we've casually thrown together beautiful amazing Salsa Fresh homemade perfect tortillas and we did it all casually leisurely this is easy and we're about ready to take the pork out of the oven and see where we're at now let's get it out of the stove and it should be falling apart tender if you poke it with a cake tester there should be no resistance then we can turn the heat all all the way back up and get this back up to a frying temperature to Brown the meat one more time the first Browning sort of just sealed the meat this is to get that nice crunchy texture to the fat and the meat that you love in a Carnitas once they're brown get them out and I just drizzle them with a little bit of that lar just to keep them moist and then I'm going to cover them and let them rest then once they're done resting you've got these perfect succulent morsels of pork carnitas that will make the tacos so now what we need to do is take a few of these pieces the different muscles and try and get a little bit of everything chopped up into one little taco now I don't know which muscle which but I'm just going to pick a few and chop a little bit of them up at a time and get them mixed up as you'll see this nugget is a little bit different in color and texture than the last one and that's sort of what you're looking for mix it all up I add a little bit of drizzle of that lar just to keep it moist and then we can build our Taco throw the tortilla right on top so it sucks up some of that fat and then just just scoop on some more of that meat then we're going to go on with that salsa ver a nice generous amount right on top then of course the garnish of cilantro and onion and then a final squeeze of some lime juice to cut through all that fat looks perfect let's give it a taste what the hell that's out of control but you want to see a secret so we've got our pork and remember what I told you earlier when I tested this recipe I cooked it with the skin on once I took the pork out I just left it in the oil to fry until it got crispy and it's still good the next day you take a little bit of that keep a few strips to lay on top chop up the rest and then just work that into the Carnitas then we just go ahead and we make that taco exactly like we made the previous one the only difference is the addition of that crackling which we're going to even reinforce on top in a garnish as these little strips a little lime wedge and to me this is the way wa until you hear the crunch there's nothing more to say if you want to make this and you should want to make this the recipe is going to be down in the description that's all that I have today I'll see you next time until then take care of yourself go feed yourselfwhen you think of Mexican meats and Tacos the first thing most people think about is carnitas traditionally various tough cuts of pork cooked in copper pots in its own fat if you were in France you'd call this technique pork Ki and it's one of the best if not the greatest Taco on Earth so this video is going to break down into three parts making the Carnitas making flour tortillas and a salsa ver to go with it all before we jump into it why don't you give a like to the Superman curl it's out today which means we're going to make some something delicious and of course it starts with pork here I have the Copa roast from Porter Road one of my favorite sources for me and actually the sponsor of this video now the Copa roast is just a collection of muscles that is cut from the pork shoulder sort of like the best parts of the pork shoulder now picnic roast a pork butt something like that will work fine and if you can get one with the skin on you should definitely use that cut the skin off and add that to the pork and at the end crisp it up until it's crackly and beautiful to make some chichon that can go right on top but this is a unique cut barbecue people would call this part right here the money musle that's the prized part of the pork butt now this pork butt doesn't have skin so we're not going to use it but I do have some skin left over so maybe we'll throw that on top at the end basically what I want to do is cut this into about 2 to 3 in chunks you want them cut into bigger pieces so they don't dry out when we go to fry them at the end so I'm going to cut this whole piece in half and then just cut them into s sort of big cubes and then we just want to lay them out and make sure we salt them heavily meats are prepped now I've seen all sorts of things put into Carnitas Citrus spices aromatics Coke evaporated milk salt water but this is a very old recipe so I like to imagine how they would be making it back then and I don't think they'd be using Coke and evaporated milk and so while you can use any and all of those things all you really need is pork salt and lar or monka it's much like Duck Ki duck that's slowly cooked in its own duck fat and then crisped up later so we're going to add a whole vat of this into a nice heavy bottomed Dutch oven so we're going to want to start on high heat and then we're going to add all of that lard to the pot then I'm going to reserve about 1/3 cup of that lard to make our tortillas later we're going to melt it down get it up to a frying temperature once it's hot we can carefully add in the pork to the hot oil and allow it to fry don't touch it for at least 5 6 7 minutes then you can give them a flip carefully rotate them around until all the meat is beautifully seared it should take about 20 minutes then we're going to turn the heat off place a lid on it put it in a 250° oven for 2 hours now you know me I care about great ingredients and to make great Carnitas you're going to need a great piece of meat and if you're not happy with your meat supplier you're going to have to check out our sponsor today Porter Ro now first off I've loved Porter Road for years long before we were ordering all our groceries online for Co and long before they've sponsored this channel to say it simply this company impressed me Porto road is an online butcher shop that delivers highquality meat directly to your door they offer a wide variety of dry-aged beef pork chicken including rare butcher cuts that actually have flavor and honestly I don't know what it is but every steak I've had from them has been the beefiest flavored steak I've ever had they work with trusted local farmers who raise animals the right way humanely on pastures with no added hormones or antibiotics and they dry age all beef and hand cut each Steak and Chop just to produce Cuts you won't find in a grocery store what I love most about Porter Road is that it feels like a local butcher shop years ago I actually requested that they offer thicker cut steaks and like 2 months later they were offering extra thick cut steak they also offer subscriptions and Steaks and Chops always arrive fresh never Frozen and I'm going to save you cash because Porter Road is offering my audience 15% off their first order just go down and click the link in the description and the promotion will automatically be applied to your order so now that pork is working gives us time to work on our flow tortillas and it's ridiculously simple unlike my attempt at corn tortillas a few months back here I've got 2 and 3/4 cups of allpurpose flour and I'm going to add that straight into a food processor then I've got 3/4 of a cup of water that goes in in I have that third cup of lard get that in there and then a few pinches of salt that's it the top on and then we're literally just going to run it until the ball forms all by itself takes like 10 seconds then I got some bench flour here just going to hit the board and get that onto a little bit of flour I'm just going to knead it together until it's a nice homogeneous ball then we're going to get it kind of squash it down a little bit we're going to cut it in half cut each half in half then cut those half in half we're going to cut those in half but obviously one Edge is tapered so I'm just going to kind of favor one side and those end up being equal size balls roll those into balls I mean is that the best way to portion out balls I don't know but it gets the job done you just roll these into a rough ball we're going to allow them to sit for about 30 minutes to kind of relax let that gluten calm down and then we're going to be able to roll these out into like very thin tortillas and they don't have to all be equally sized brust stick is nice here I'm to get them onto a sheet tray just going to place a damp paper towel over it along with a little towel and I'm just going to set that off to the side for about 30 minutes next up a good taco needs a great salsa and you can use whatever you'd like my personal favorite is a salsa ver or a green salsa there's many different green Salsas the one we're making is a ttio based salsa now I got some beautiful ones you want to look for a nice husk around them that's nice and kind of fresh and then you just want to pull that off and you're going to see the ttio inside that has a little bit of a sticky film on it that we just need to rinse off easy peasy we going to get the husks off give them a rinse and then give everything a quick chop we're going to fry them off in some oil before turning it into salsa first up we just want to cut these in half this what the inside looks like it's not a green tomato then we need an onion but I don't need too much I'm just going to cut a little cheek off the edge then I'm just going to cut that into these little wedges then two jalapenos I'm just going to cut the edges off toss that so I'm just going to fry the onions the jalapeno and the garlic together those are get cooked first and then I can fry up the tonos now in a pan on medium high heat I'm going to coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil and then I'm going to add in the jalapenos the garlic and the onion and I really just want to char those on all sides can tell the jalapeno Skin's blistered and brown so I can get those into a little Neutra bullet or a small blender first let those onions and garlic keep cooking and when they're brown add them to the blender then I'm going to add a little bit more oil and then Ino the tamao cutsside down we're going to let those cook and sear on that first side and then give them a flip and let them cook for another minute on that other side and then we're going to take a little bit of water we're going to add that into the pan to Del glaze the pan while also steam finishing the tomatillos after they cook for a few minutes we to kill the heat add the Tomos into the blender along with just a little bit of that cooking liquid just enough to get the salsa processing maybe a little less than halfway now we can finish it off we just need a little bit of cilantro I'm just going to tear some just like that the juice of two limes this is a rich fatty dish so I want to kind of make this salsa very acidic to cut through all that richness and fat and then I have a little chicken bullion Cube I'm going to just put a half of that in there and then salsa needs salt if you ever make a salsa and it's just kind of not hitting the way you want it it's probably cuz you don't have enough salt the lid on and then we're just going to puree then just blend it to your desired consistency I like it a little bit smoother on the thick side that tastes money as it cools down it's going to develop even more so we're going to let that kind of chill off to the side while we're here one of the other things we going to need is a little bit of diced cilantro and onion now always when you do a little cilantro onion topping on a Taco you want to use a white onion they're just not as kind of pungent and strong raw making them perfect to kind of top on tacos I just want to cut this into like a small dice then get them into a bowl then we can take our cilantro and just roughly chop it put that into the bowl and then mix the two together you want about the same amount of cilantro in there as you do onion now we can set that off to the side until we're ready now back to our tortillas see now they're a lot softer easier to kind of form into a nice smooth ball without any creases I'll just go through and roll them again one more time and then I have my carbon steel griddle heating up we want to get it around 400° you can use a cast iron pan as well I got my bench flour throw some on there I got my rolling pen I'm going to flour that as well then we going to take one of the balls I'm going to place it down and I'm just going to use this part of my thumb to just flatten it out into a circle just like that make sure each side is nicely flowed and then just like I would roll out a sheet of pasta I'm going to push forward One Way rotate push forward rotate push forward then you want to roll it out as thin as you can and as circular as you can not all tortillas need to be tiny a lot of authentic tortillas in Mexico are actually larger for tacos just like that about an 8 in Taco then we're going to lightly grease The Griddle and then straight onto the griddle with that tortilla and we're not going to touch it and we're going to allow it to cook there for a few minutes while it steams and Bubbles from the inside then we can give it a flip and it should be lightly browned on that first side and then continue to inflate check the underside it's lightly brown the same way as the top that's perfect we can get that into a little bowl with a towel to keep them insulated and Steam while we roll out the rest of the tortillas and cook them just the same way they're pretty straightforward you shouldn't have too much issue with them and they should be be insanely delicious now we've got 9 minutes left on our 2hour timer and we've casually thrown together beautiful amazing Salsa Fresh homemade perfect tortillas and we did it all casually leisurely this is easy and we're about ready to take the pork out of the oven and see where we're at now let's get it out of the stove and it should be falling apart tender if you poke it with a cake tester there should be no resistance then we can turn the heat all all the way back up and get this back up to a frying temperature to Brown the meat one more time the first Browning sort of just sealed the meat this is to get that nice crunchy texture to the fat and the meat that you love in a Carnitas once they're brown get them out and I just drizzle them with a little bit of that lar just to keep them moist and then I'm going to cover them and let them rest then once they're done resting you've got these perfect succulent morsels of pork carnitas that will make the tacos so now what we need to do is take a few of these pieces the different muscles and try and get a little bit of everything chopped up into one little taco now I don't know which muscle which but I'm just going to pick a few and chop a little bit of them up at a time and get them mixed up as you'll see this nugget is a little bit different in color and texture than the last one and that's sort of what you're looking for mix it all up I add a little bit of drizzle of that lar just to keep it moist and then we can build our Taco throw the tortilla right on top so it sucks up some of that fat and then just just scoop on some more of that meat then we're going to go on with that salsa ver a nice generous amount right on top then of course the garnish of cilantro and onion and then a final squeeze of some lime juice to cut through all that fat looks perfect let's give it a taste what the hell that's out of control but you want to see a secret so we've got our pork and remember what I told you earlier when I tested this recipe I cooked it with the skin on once I took the pork out I just left it in the oil to fry until it got crispy and it's still good the next day you take a little bit of that keep a few strips to lay on top chop up the rest and then just work that into the Carnitas then we just go ahead and we make that taco exactly like we made the previous one the only difference is the addition of that crackling which we're going to even reinforce on top in a garnish as these little strips a little lime wedge and to me this is the way wa until you hear the crunch there's nothing more to say if you want to make this and you should want to make this the recipe is going to be down in the description that's all that I have today I'll see you next time until then take care of yourself go feed yourself\n"