The dish is a starting point for exploring a wider food story. The guide below looks more closely at its background and different forms. When you want to cook, visit the recipe collection for ingredient quantities and step-by-step methods.
Overview
A tortilla is a thin, circular unleavened flatbread, originally made from corn (maize) but now also made of wheat flour. The corn tortilla is a staple food in most of Mexico and Central America, while the flour tortilla is typical of Northern Mexican and Mexican-American cuisine. The tortilla has become popular across the world.
Corn tortillas are made by treating corn with limewater, a process known as nixtamalization, forming a dough known as masa, which is baked on a griddle. Flour tortillas are made of refined wheat flour, water, and shortening, and are generally larger than corn tortillas. Both types are commonly industrially produced, with corn tortillas usually using a dehydrated form of masa called masa harina. Tortillas are soft but quickly become stale. They are high in calories but lack essential nutrients.
Fresh tortillas can be used to carry various ingredients, forming dishes such as the taco, burrito, enchilada, and quesadilla. They may instead be used as a spoon to pick up accompanying food. Other uses of tortillas include dishes such as tortilla soup and fried products such as tostadas and tortilla chips.
Terminology
The word tortilla is derived from the Spanish word torta, meaning roughly 'cake', plus the diminutive suffix -illa; therefore, tortilla can be translated as 'little cake'. In Mexico, a tortilla bakery is known as a tortilleria; it is distinguished from a wheat bread bakery, or panadería. In Spanish cuisine, the word tortilla instead refers to a type of omelette.
In Nahuatl (spoken by the ancient Aztecs and modern Nahuas), tortillas are called tlaxcalli . The Ancient Maya used the word cauhimich. The contemporary Maya languages use the word wah, originally a broader term for various corn products.
Varieties
Tortillas are round unleavened flatbreads. They are very thin, consisting almost entirely of crust. There are two main types, corn tortillas and flour tortillas, which undergo vastly different processing. Industrially produced versions of both types are common, which have standardized recipes and mild flavor. Tortilla machines continuously produce them using dough sheeters and extruders; some can produce 30,000 per hour.
Corn
The ingredients of corn tortillas are corn (maize) and limewater (an alkaline solution of calcium hydroxide). They typically use white or yellow corn, though other varieties such as blue corn are occasionally used. The corn is soaked in limewater, a step known as nixtamalization. This step has the largest impact on the final product, increasing its flexibility and nutritional value. The nixtamalized corn, known as nixtamal, is stone-ground into a dough known as masa. The masa is flattened between the hands, against a flat surface, or using tortilla press. It is then baked on a griddle—or, in industrial settings, in an oven that performs continuous sheeting and baking. While baking, it undergoes reactions including browning and starch gelatinization, and it slightly puffs up. Corn tortillas are about 15 cm in diameter, while the thickness varies.
There are three methods of producing masa for tortillas. The traditional method involves cooking corn in a pot of limewater, then steeping it overnight and discarding the liquid; the resulting nixtamal is ground with a stone known as a metate to produce masa, which is hand-shaped and baked on both sides on a clay griddle known as a comal. Tortillas using this method are thicker than others. Fresh masa is industrially produced with a similar process using a rotating grinder. This is extruded and baked in an oven to produce tortillas. Dry masa, also known as masa harina, is produced by grinding nixtamal into pieces that are dried to form a flour.
Other varieties
Nixtamalized sorghum is sometimes mixed with corn for tortillas in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Tortillas may be made with only sorghum or with a mix of sorghum, corn and cassava. Quinoa is also used for tortillas.
Serving
Tortillas may be eaten for any meal. Corn and flour tortillas have similar uses. They are accompanied by foods such as meat, beans, vegetables, or eggs. A tortilla can function as a serving plate or as a utensil, tearing off small pieces and wrapping them around accompanying foods to eat by hand.
Many dishes use tortillas to carry other foods. Common fillings in tortilla-based dishes include refried beans, pulled meat, chorizo, scrambled eggs, or fish. Additionally, they may have salsa (a spicy sauce) and ingredients such as onion slices, lettuce, or guacamole, as well as herbs such as cilantro.
Consumption
Tortillas are popular as they use commonly available ingredients. About 1.4 billion tortillas are eaten every day. The market size for tortillas, as of 2012, is about $12 billion, with another $10 billion for related products including tacos and tortilla chips. The world's production of tortillas is 42% in Mexico, 36% in the United States, and 9% in Central America, as of 2004. The average annual consumption of tortillas, as of 2001, is 85 kg in Mexico—or as high as 120 kg in some regions of the country—as well as 6 kg in the United States and 0.3 kg in Europe. The largest tortilla company is Gruma, with global sales of $4.2 billion in 2011 (equivalent to $ billion in ).
Many people eat tortillas for every meal. Some prepare them fresh at home, which requires hours of labor every day. Others purchase tortillas for everyday consumption, reserving homemade tortillas for special occasions. Automated machines are used by tortillerias, small businesses dedicated to tortilla-making, as well as supermarkets, which sell tortillas at lower prices. Tortilla mislabeling occurs when tortilla products are incorrectly labeled in their ingredients or dietary claims. Some small-scale tortillerias sell handmade, but these are much more expensive than those using machines. Many chefs create unique variations of tortillas; for example, the Mexico City restaurant Pujol serves a corn tortilla filled with eggs and beans, Los Angeles-based chef John Rivera Sedlar presses flower petals into corn tortillas, and Tucson-based chef Janos Wilder mixes local native ingredients into flour tortillas.
Tortilla chips and tostadas are sold as snack foods or used in fast food dishes.
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