How To Make Tortillas When You Don't Have A Tortilla Press

Few things scream authenticity in south-of-the-border fare like freshly made tortillas. The soft chewiness and enticing aroma — dead giveaways that a Mexican restaurant makes its own tortillas — blow the uniform store-bought versions out of the water. Yet many folks don't know how to create them at home. They only require three ingredients, but what throws some off is not having a tortilla press to get them to just the right thickness before cooking.

To find out how to make the perfect vessels for elevated Mexican cuisine without a proper press, we reached out to Marc Marrone, Executive Chef at Houston's festive rooftop cantina Arriba Abajo. As someone intimately familiar with cooking authentic Mexican dishes, making hot-out-of-the-pan tortillas is second nature to Marrone. He first noted that the right tools for the job are your best bet, saying, "Generally, it is best to use a tortilla press when preparing tortillas as it provides the proper leverage and distribution of pressure to create a compact, even tortilla."

That's not much help to those who don't have the niche kitchen tool on hand, but he had a solution for folks who want to do their best with what they have in-house. He said, "if a tortilla press isn't available, I've used a heavy bottom pot in place of a tortilla press." With this common kitchen utensil, you can have fresh flour discs in no time given that you know how to use it for this purpose.

It's all good and well to say a heavy bottom pot can be utilized to produce exquisitely chewy tortillas, but how exactly to use the utensil in this makeshift manner is another thing. Marrone had some advice for this as well, saying "The key to creating a tortilla without a press is applying enough weight and level pressure to make the tortilla thin and flat enough for cooking."

Once you've mixed all-purpose flour and water until you have constructed a soft dough, you are almost ready to flatten it using your kitchen hack. You will also want to add some neutral oil (a great example of why you don't always need extra-virgin olive oil in every dish) so the tortilla holds its structure when compressed. While bearing down on the dough with your heavy bottom pot, keep an eye on it to make sure the thickness remains consistent as you thin it out. The pot should be big enough so that no dough will come creeping out of the sides as you create the slim disc. 

If the dough doesn't come out flawlessly round, that's okay. Most authentically-made tortillas don't have the uniform look of factory-made ones. Besides, it is really all about the taste, and knowing how to make tortillas without purchasing a dedicated press won't affect the flavor one bit.