Potato Tortillas from food storage

This wonderful addition to our Food Storage Skills Notebook, comes from "The Little Red Hen" Blog. I'm sure you'll be just as thrilled as I to add another recipe to my collection, as well as another method for making tortillas. Yes, on occasion we do buy flour tortillas (on a couple of selected brands), but we mostly make our own. Where we control what is put in them.

Behold, the can of instant potatoes from my food storage. I am partial to fresh peeled potatoes being used to make mashed potatoes. I guess that is why I still have a bunch of cans of instant potatoes! I have used instant potatoes to make bread before, so I thought I'd try out the recipe for Potato Tortillas in my cookbook, Gourmet Tortillas by Karen Howarth. These are delicious, and yet another way you can use and rotate your food storage.

In addition to the instant potatoes (use any kind of mashed potatoes for this recipe), you will need flour, baking powder, salt and butter.

I start out with the mashed potatoes in a glass measuring cup. You need 1/2 c. potatoes (prepared), then add water to yield 7 ounces (nearly 1c.). Next, in another bowl, put 1 1/2 TBSP softened butter. If you need to microwave it to soften it, do it in 10 second intervals. In this same bowl, add 2 1/2 c. white flour, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 1/2 tsp baking powder. Then, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the flour resembles coarse meal. This distributes the butter throughout the flour, which gives you a uniform product. If you don't have a tool for this, just use 2 dinner knives, and cut through the entire mixture with the knives going from the center to the edge of the bowl, in opposite directions.

Next, add the mashed potato/water mixture and mix well. You want a soft ball of dough. If you have a bunch of leftover dry ingredients in the bottom of the bowl, removed the ball of dough, then add a little bit of water to moisten the remainder. When it is a soft dough, gently knead it into the main ball of dough.

Once you have the ball of dough, cut it into 8 pieces with a serrated knife, as shown below.

Take these pieces, shaping into small balls of dough, and slightly flatten the top. Cover these with a dishtowel and let rest for 15 minutes.

Heat up your cast iron skillet (or frying pan), and begin rolling out one ball of dough at a time. Each tortilla should be about 8 inches in diameter. You can check your first one with a ruler if you want.

Carefully lift the uncooked tortilla onto the skillet, and let it cook (while you being to roll out the next ball of dough) for about a minute on low to medium. When bubbles appear on the top, it is about time to turn the tortilla over.

The tortilla should be lightly browned. When you are finished rolling out the second tortilla , it will be time to take this one off of the skillet and put it on the cooling rack.

Doesn't that look delicious? I thought so, so I put a little butter on it and ate it while I finished cooking the rest. All of the time I was doing this, I was on the phone with one of my BFF's, Cindy Lou. See, it isn't that hard!

After you cook each one, just stack it on top of the previous one on your cooking rack. When they are all cooked, let them cool for 5 minutes, and put them in a ziplock bag (I used a bread bag because I am out of gallon sized ziplock bags). You can store these in the freezer, or in the fridge or just leave them on the counter top for up to one week. Enjoy!!!