Homemade Tortillas and Chicken Tacos

 While we are all at home, making dinner every night, I have been taking the 'opportunity' to try some new things.  For a couple of years, I have been wanting to start cutting back on the processed foods in our diet.  Work and busy schedules had always prevented me from really giving it a good try.  Now I understand that I will probably not be able to completely cut out all the processed foods in our diet, but I figure I can try and cut out things that make sense and are within my skill set to do.

This has kinda been my guidebook.  

I originally checked this book out of the library, and then realized that I should just buy it, clicked over to Amazon, and it has paid for itself already.  

The first real thing I made was the homemade tortillas.

They are so good and completely worth the effort.

I searched for this online and I could not find, so please see below.

What you will need:

4 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of salt

2 teaspoons of baking powder

2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

4 tablespoons nonhydrogenated vegetable shorting or lard (I use the Crisco baking sticks)

1 1/2 cups of warm water

Putting it together:

Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl.

Cut in the unsalted butter & vegetable shorting.  I used a pastry blender, but you can also just use your hands.  Work with the dough into you have pea-sized lumps.

Add the water (slowly) tossing the dough with your hands until have a sticky dough.

Cover the bowl with a damp dish towel and allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes.

Flour your working space and divide the dough into 16 balls (3 inches in diameter)

Heat a skillet on the stove, I use alittle non-stick olive oil spray, but it can be done dry as well.

Add some more flour to the counter and begin roll out the each ball to an 8 inch diameter, and the thickness is about 1/16.  These takes practice, mine are still alittle odd shaped, but who cares if they are good.

Working one at time, add the rolled tortilla to the skillet and 'fry' each tortilla until bubbly and brown on each side.  

Serve these right away and freeze any leftovers (if you have any, these go quick at my house) up to 3 months.

They are easy to heat up in the skillet when you need them (or crave one)

I got some out of the freezer last night for a super quick dinner with some leftover chicken.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do!

Enjoy!

~Cyn