Photo by David Katz on behalf of Masienda
By Kathleen Furore
“The basis of everything we do at Suerte can be found in our heirloom corn tortillas with mouth-watering masa appeal.”
With that proclamation, Suerte restaurant in Austin, Texas, sums up the status of the one ingredient found in virtually every Mexican restaurant kitchen.
Today, Suerte Executive Chef Fermín Núñez and myriad chefs from coast to coast are making masa and pressing tortillas in ways that take this staple of Hispanic cuisine beyond basic flour and corn to colorful and flavorful new heights — often using techniques that can be traced back centuries.
Let’s Talk Trends
Making tortillas in-house, often starting from scratch by making masa, is topping the list of trends equipment and ingredient manufacturers, as well as chefs, are seeing.
“The most significant, enduring change I have seen is an increased interest in producing masa in-house,” says Jorge Gaviria, CEO and founder of Masienda, a company that partners with hundreds of traditional farmers in Mexico to grow, source and offer the highest quality single-origin ingredients, including heirloom corn.
The availability of equipment and ingredients needed to make quality masa “has enabled restaurants to launch their own nixtamal programs with confidence, often at a fraction of the cost [it was] before,” Gaviria says. “It used to be crazy to have pasta, baking, butchering or coffee programs in restaurants until it became the norm. The same thing is happening with masa today around the world — making masa from scratch is the new norm. The conversation is only growing.
Today, it’s a full-fledged movement.” Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman (aka Chef AQ), the award-winning executive chef at Guadalajara-inspired José in Dallas, echoes Gaviria.
“More people are gravitating towards making their own masa as opposed to [using] store-bought tortillas,” says Chef AQ, who makes the masa she uses to craft the creative corn tortillas that grace the plates at José.
She is so well-known for her masas that she was asked to serve her special Masa Madness menu at the renowned James Beard House in New York in March 2020.
Today’s trending tortillas start with a homemade masa base, then move on from there.
“We have noticed that consumers have become more health-conscious and fresh focused. This shift is causing the creative landscape of tortillas to expand from the traditional options of flour or corn,” reports Seth Huerta, marketing manager at tortilla equipment company BE&SCO Manufacturing. “Imaginative recipes are now beginning to flood the market, from blue corn/flour hybrids and white corn tortillas, all the way to beet root and sweet potato tortillas.”
Hybrid tortillas, in fact, are one tool in the tortilla arsenal for Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta, owners of Evil Cooks, a Los Angeles-based food company known for its pop-up events featuring gourmet street tacos throughout southern California and beyond.
“We do hybrid tortillas for our dessert tacos — taco de flan, churro cheesecake taco and more,” says Garcia. “Our hybrid tortilla is a mixture of 50/50 corn and flour that gives us the texture of a flour
tortilla with hints of corn.”
When it comes to tortillas infused with color and flavor, Chef AQ is leading the way. Many of her signature dishes feature flavored masas she originally created for Tacos de Tacha, a series of taco pop-ups she launched in 2018 — think masa infused with habaneros, almonds, coconut ash, squid ink, black beans and other very creative ingredients.
How does she decide which ingredients to use?
“I usually start with a protein and work my way down,” Chef AQ explains. “So, I know cherries, oranges, fennel, beets, cabbage, and more work well with duck. If I can puree one of those ingredients, then I can incorporate that into a masa and use the other components or pair sub-components — more subtle items that work well with primary components — to build a taco.”
How much flavor do the ingredients typically add to the tortilla? Do they also change the texture?
“It depends on what we’re using,” she says. “Some are subtle like black beans, and others are more intense like squid ink.”
Enter Heirloom Corn
When it comes to the basic ingredient used to make masa, heirloom corn is starting to take the industry by storm.
More and more restaurant chefs are turning to the ancient, pre-Columbian nixtamal process, which involves cooking native Mexican heirloom corn in slaked lime, or cal. Suerte even calls the masa made fresh daily from heirloom corn “el corazón de Suerte.”
Just what is heirloom corn? As Gaviria notes, the word “heirloom” refers to something of value that has been passed down through multiple generations. And that is exactly what heirloom corn is.
“Heirloom corn comes from farmer-preserved seeds that have been hand selected for the best flavor and maintained for hundreds (even thousands) of years. Each generation does its own part to further perfect the corn’s flavor and quality before it’s passed on to the next generation… think of it as expressly culinary, not commodity,” information from Masienda explains.
Examples from Masienda include the top-selling Heirloom White Olotillo Corn from Oaxaca, Heirloom Blue Cónico Corn from Tlaxcala, and Heirloom Yellow Tuxpeño Corn from Chiapas.
Suerte’s corn comes from Barton Springs Mill in the Texas Hill Country, which sources the corn from organic crops using the same strains of seeds planted in Texas in the early 1900s.
Advice from the Pros
House-made tortillas clearly offer the freshest quality product for Mexican restaurant menus. As Gaviria says, “There is no substitute for a freshly prepared tortilla — it’s as good as it gets!”
But is it always worth the time and labor involved?
That will depend, of course, on your operation.
If you don’t want to go through the process of making your own masa, Chef AQ recommends searching for a local molino, or masa vendor. “I started making infused tortillas because I
wanted to get creative with masa since I couldn’t source a molino,” she says. “I was doing high volume and wasn’t finding masa that worked for my restaurant.”
Using masa harina is another option.
And how can you decide if making any tortillas inhouse is the right move for your operation?
“I would say that [operators] should take a look at their volume first,” Chef AQ says. “It can be space- and
time-consuming.”
As she notes, even if you opt to make some tortillas in-house, they don’t all have to be made the same way.
“For me, it was something I had to slowly reintroduce to my guests,” Chef AQ concludes. “We have high volume and it’s not sustainable to do all heirloom corn tortillas for every entree.”
Sidebar: Tortillas Ceremoniales
Tortillas made with heirloom corn and those infused with flavor are becoming more and more common at Mexican restaurants nationwide.
Now, another centuries-old tortilla tradition is making its way into restaurant kitchens: “painting” tortillas with colorful designs to create tortillas ceremoniales.
These celebratory tortillas trace their origins to Guanajuato and Querétaro, according to Alex Garcia, owner with Elvia Huerta of Los Angeles-based Evil Cooks, a food company known for its creative pop-up events throughout southern California and beyond. The tradition, Garcia notes, is part of the Otomí culture in his homeland.
The Otomí people carve intricate designs into mesquite wood stamps or discs called sellos; ink the design using natural pigments made from honeysuckle or cochineal; press partially cooked, hand-made tortillas against the surface to pick up the inked design; then cook them for a bit longer to fix the image, a story in Design Observer explains.
“They are mostly used in quinceañeras, bodas (weddings) and bautismos (baptisms), and we make them in celebration of our culture,” says Garcia, who adapted the process to create tortillas ceremoniales featuring the Evil Cooks logo. “Our first stamp was custom made for us by a carpenter in Mexico,” Garcia says. “I want to say that they don’t sell them — I never saw them at any mercado during my travels through Mexico. Most likely they are passed by family members to keep their personal sello in the family.”
At first, Garcia used charcoal to “paint” the Evil Cooks logo on the tortillas. “But it got expensive, so we had to get creative and we ended up using the ashes from the chiles from our recado negro,” he explains.
Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman (aka Chef AQ), executive chef at José in Dallas, also has made tortillas ceremoniales — one version made with a custom-made stamp of her skull tatoo. But it isn’t something she does often.
“They’re a lot of work and usually only make for special occasions,” she says.
TORTILLA RESOURCE GUIDE
BE&SCO Manufacturing. A variety of manual and automatic tortilla presses and press & oven combos to fit any size or style of restaurant. Minom Premium Flour Base for making flour, corn hybrid and whole wheat tortillas also available. 210-734-5124; bescomfg.com
Dutchess Bakers Machinery Co. A variety of manual tortilla presses and dough dividers/ rounders to meet any restaurant’s tortilla making needs. 800-777-4498 or 715-394-2422; dutchessbakers.com
Tortilla Masters. The Ventura Flex Tabletop corn tortilla machine can make up to 840 4-inch to 6-inch tortillas per hour. 281-994-7010; tortillamachine.com
Masienda. All you’ll need for a kernel-to-masa program including heirloom corn, chef-grade cal, and the Molinito to grind nixtamalized corn. Chef-grade masa harina in white, red and blue varieties also available. masienda.com
Rovey Seed Co. White, yellow, blue and red corn grown especially for tortillas. 217-227-4541; roveyseed.com