Loading ...Even though I’ve lived almost my whole life in the Cali Baja Bi-National Mega-Region, until today I had never toured a tortilla factory. It’s awesome! At least Tortilleria Lily is.
We met Joe from Tortilleria Lily a couple weeks ago at the Link, coincidentally after I had spent the day touring Tijuana looking for a certain kind of tortilla press (oddly enough, I wasn’t able to find it either at Mercado Hidalgo or at numerous bars). Joe couldn’t hook us up with the press, but he was able to tell us a lot about tortilla making. Since we sell a lot of tortillas here, it seemed like a good idea to check out the process in person.
Here’s the illustrated, annotated version.
Lily’s tortillas are made with almost all white corn, they add a little yellow corn because they like the oil it provides. The corn comes in and is stored in this hopper.
In addition to the white corn with bits of yellow corn, there is a little lime (calcium hydroxide, not citrus) in there, which is the key to the whole nixtamalization process that makes masa. Here you can see the corn ready to be cooked and nixtamalized.
The batches are 1100 lbs. each., which is big compared to making them at home, but as you can see it’s still a very human-scale endeavor.
After the corn is cooked, it’s stone ground in this machine to make masa.
The grinder simulates the mortar and pestle of a home cook. Here are the stones that are in the machine, two of them are used at once.
Joe showed us how the corn starts at the center of the stones (it’s pulled there by a screw), and then works its way to the outside. That’s why the grooves in the center of the stone are wider, and taper down to quite small at the edge of the stone.
The masa is then formed and cooked into tortillas, and here they come down the conveyor!
The whole operation is old-school stuff: these tortillas have no preservatives, they’re made with white corn, they have a low shelf life. They’re made by artisans who know their stuff. Naturally, they are now the official tortillas to the Linkery.
Tortilleria Lily is on University near 43rd, just east of I-15.
And they’re presumably lard-free, right? Looks great!
Yes, sadly there is no lard in these
. I think that typically corn tortillas are made with just corn, water, and lime. Maybe salt, too? Unless you get those Mission brand fake ones with a billion processed ingredients, but you can taste that right away.
For flour tortillas, we generally make those ourselves, both with or without lard, depending on whether they’ll be used for a vegetarian dish or not.
Great write-up Jay