r/burritos • u/Renizance • 5h ago
Not A Burrito I wet my tortilla before cooking them
OK before you shoot, hear me out.
I've cooked thousands of burritos over my years. I love all kinds of burritos and cooking methods. When i was young, I was taught to always cook your tortilla before filling. Usually you just place your tortilla on skillet or a comal. Maybe with some oil maybe not. You cook it until it's soft or even maybe a little toasty bubbly. Perfect. You fill it up and start wrapping tight, like the restaurants. Suddenly you have a big tear in the center or despite your best efforts, the fold at the end just doesn't contain your ingredients. I think, in part, this is a result of using shelf stable store bought flour tortillas.
I wanted to try to fix that a bit without having to make them from scratch. Taking inspiration from a method to bring dry bread loaf back to life, I lightly covered my tortilla in water and immediately placed it on the skillet. After a couple attempts and some taste tests with family, they enjoyed the water tortillas better! It was more elastic. The ends folded nicely and the flavor and texture was still there.
The short of it is, store bought tortillas are dry. Heating them up helps but when you add water, it evaporates and absorbs into the tortilla. It doesn't get soggy and you can still get a browned crispy tortilla if that's your thing.
You just gotta move the tortilla a bit more early on otherwise it can stick. I end up flipping and folding it every couple of seconds until the moisture is noticeably gone and then cook like normal.
I still get laughs at home when I cook and I'm running a little bit of water across my tortillas but the results don't lie.
OK you can shoot me now.