KW 22 – Making Gorditas (Thick Corn Tortillas)

Making gorditas is a lot easier when you can watch someone make them. So I made a video for you!

Using your hands has always been the most traditional way of preparing any food, and making gorditas is no exception. Patiently hand patting out corn masa is how people have been making tortillas for centuries. However, once the tortila press was invented, the art of making tortillas by hand almost dissappeared.

Making Gorditas takes Practice

But making gorditas requires hand patting out the dough. It’s rather a peaceful task and takes just a session or two in order to nail down the skill.

There are any number of fillings that you can make for your gordita meal, but the most tradtional fillings inclue cheese, chorizo, potatoes and eggs. My favorite type of gordita is a chorizo gordita. The sizzling chorizo fat is absorbes by the toasty corn gordita, so not a speck of flavor goes to waste. Delicious on cold winter nights or while you are cooling yourself on the porch in the summer time.

Use Corn Tortilla Mix

Savory gorditas are made specifically with corn tortilla mix. There are wheat flour gorditas made with all-purpose flour, but in my part of the country those are sweetened with and dusted with sugar. Corn flour gorditas are always savory. US products such as corn meal and corn flour will not work for making gorditas. Specifically you need corn tortilla mix. A gordita making party may be the way to go if you and a group of friends want to learn how to prepare this ancient yet delicious bread.

Thankfully, corn tortilla mix is not expensive, so you can afford to have a few failures. Anything that is over cooked or under cooked can be fed to the birds or turned into compost. In spite of the minimal challenge, these thick tortillas are fairly easy to make. You will find yourself back in the kitchen practicing once you have devoured your first batch!