Make Tortillas Like a Mesoamerican Chef (The Hard Way) 

Can't wait for part 3 where Shaq grows his own corn

Shaq, thanks for sticking with the "sponsor at the end" move. Basically an unmatched viewing experience on youtube these days. And, you're compelling enough of a presenter that I watch the sponsor segments occasionally. But here's my question: do sponsors know how effortless it is to skip midroll sponsor reads? Who watches those?

the james hoffman bit had me doin an honest to god belly laugh. the little shrine, your scandalized little "no...". good stuff as always

As somebody who does writeups and works with history/archeology channels on the topic, the Mesoamericans (Aztec, Maya, etc) deserve WAY more credit for agricultural and botanical innovations (as well as related things like pharmaceutical and medical sciences, sanitation practices etc) then just what they tend to get for nixtamalization and stuff like maize/tomatoe/chili/cacao domestication: Most of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital (which was located in the middle of a lake, now drained) was built out of artificial islands known as chinampas, which involved staking out the shallow lakebed, filling it with layers of soil and vegetative matter, and then anchoring it to the lakebed via planting Willow trees; with canals left between the land plots and fields (this was used to make both extra urban/residential and agricultural land for farms). This used local soils, preserved the existing ecology with the lake system with fish and amphibians, the trees acted as wind breakers and the canals/plots as flood management, and when used for food production the plots acted as super-efficient hydroponic farms (though I've read mixed things about how agriculturally productive they reallty were. So a huge amount of the city was criss-crossed with venice like canals that ran through suburbs with tons of greenery and flowers, and then you also had massive, richly painted (Mesoamerican ruins just look grey today due to erosion) palace and temple complexes, giant markets, aqueducts, royal zoos, aquariums, aviaries, etc. At it's height, the city covered 13.5 sqkm, the same area that Rome's walls encompassed, and had 200,000 denizens, almost as much as the largest cities in Europe at the time. Mesoamerican city planning in general actually had a big emphasis on incorporating open spaces and naturalistic elements into themselves, with city centers organizing temples, palaces, etc around plazas; and palaces in turn having open-air courtyards rooms were arranged around, with gardens often being built into communal spaces or inside or around palaces, and then radial suburbs of commoner residences extending out, interspersed with agricultural land or managed natural reserves and agroforestry where natural forests/jungle was kept, but managed with a cleared underrush for both hunting and crops (Tenochtitlan actually didn't quite follow that city planning trend since the lake meant it had strict clear city limits, and the most urbanized parts of it in the center was on a semi-grid system) To continue with the horticultural theme, It was REALLY common for Aztec rulers to have giant botanical gardens built into palaces or royal retreats: At Huaxtepec Moctezuma II had a royal botanical garden that covered 10 square kilometers with over 2000 kinds of plants, some of which were intentionally brought in from different climates to see if they would grow there. At Texcotzinco, a site of a royal palace retreat, baths, and gardens for Nezahualcoyotl, the most famous king of the second most powerful Aztec city, Texcoco; the bathes and gardens were fed water via a 5 mile long series of aqauaducts, which at some points rose 150 feet off the ground, had a series of pools and channels to regulate the flow rate, and then the aquaduct formed a raised circle around the peak of the hilltop the palace and baths were at, where the water flowed into fountains and shrines with painted frescos and sculptures, and then finally formed artificial waterfalls that watered the gardens at the hills base, which had different sections to emulate different Mexican biomes and ecosystems. As the playing around with ecology and growing conditions implies, a lot of these royal gardens weren't just recreational elite pleasures, but were actually a precursor to modern academic botanical gardens (indeed, it's been suggested the first European examples of that, which show up in Europe within the next century or so, were inspired by Aztec examples, since there's some other academic borrowing of botanical science, which I'll get back to): You had them stocking plants used for medical purposes, experimenting with growing conditions and properties, sorting them into taxonomic systems (not phylogentically, because no theory of natural selection, but still a formal taxonomic system, even with a binominal naming scheme!) etc! I don't know if we have sources disscussing the mangement of them, but we know that Moctezuma's zoo and aviary had full time staff to care for animals and there's even been Jaguar remains found that had healed surgical wounds, so there surely would have been career botanists caring for and overseeing things. Sadly, of course, almost all Prehispanic Mesoamerican books and documents were burned by the Spanish, but we do have some surviving botanical documentation, mostly from sources with joint Aztec-Spanish authorship made during the early colonial period that is describing Aztec botany, such as the Badianus Manuscript and books 10 and 11 in the Florentine Codex. Both of these sources also describe a ton of pharmaceutical and medical applications for plants and herbs, with the Aztec also having really developed medical and sanitation practices for the time (there was an entire fleet of civil servants that washed buildings and streets and collected waste from public toilets to reuse for fertilizers and dyes, to name one example_), with tons of toothpastes, mouthwashes, soaps, colgones, perfumes, laxatives, ointments, etc; and we have recorded surgeries for skin grafts, eye surgery, the first recorded use of intramedullary nails as a surgery to set broken bones, better understanding of the circulatory system then Europe at the time (makes sense, considering all the ways blood and sacrifice played into the religion), etc. Francisco Hernandez, the personal naturalist and physician to Philip II, actually traveled to mexico and documented Aztec medicine, botany, and zoology (sadly only some of his records on this survive) and begrudgingly admitted Aztec sciences here were better then Spain's. There's even a theory that the famous Voynich manuscript was one-off attempt at transcribing Nahuatl into it's own script and is an Aztec botanical record, though last I heard most Nahuatl linguists don't seem to agree with that. And then there's all the ways flowers and plants played into art and poetry and such. People love to talk about sacrifice and skulls and such with the Aztec, but ANY sort of context you could possible imagine they'd find a way to slap flowers, birds/feathers or jade into things artistically, and those 3 things were seen as the prime symbols of luxury and elegance, in the same way we talk about Gold or Diamonds. Newborn children's were talked about by their parents in nursery songs as bundles of jade or flowers or precious feathers, The word for "poetry" in Nahuatl/the Aztec language literally meant "flowery song", soldiers who died in combat (or mothers in childbirth) were reborn as hummingbirds or butterflies, one of the best afterlifes, Tlalocan, was a floral and aquatic mountain paradise (which many botanical gardens built by them were meant to emulate, etc). For people who wanna read more on this, I recommend "An Aztec Herbal: The Classic Codex of 1552" (an annotated translation of the Badianus manuscript) and "Flora of the Codex Cruz-Badianus" (there's also some high res color scans of the original Badianus manuscript online on the INAH's mediateca site); Book 10/11 of the Florentine Codex, "Public Health in Aztec Society", "Aztec Medicine by Francisco Guerra" (though it repeats outdated, disproven info re: inflated sacrifice totals), "Empirical Aztec Medicine by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano", and "Precious Beauty: The Aesthetic and Economic Value of Aztec Gardens" (and a lot of papers/books by Susan Toby Evans, who is an expert on mesoamerican gardens and palaces), and Kelly McDonough and Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria's research on testing Aztec medical treatments. A lot of this stuff is published online for free as open access research, too. I also have extended writeups about this I've made myself (I do essays and help history/archeology channels with stuff on Mesoamerica), if people want that messag me on twitte, I'm Majora__Z

Your grandma is right😂. Industrial masaharina has saved thousands of women from spending more time in the kitchen. Interesting that the same thing has happened with dried pasta. And precooked corn flour for arepas, empanada and sorullos (puerto rican corn fritters) Although it is always good to know the traditional knowledge of preparation for these foods.

Fan who happens to be a chemist here. I noticed you mentioned you need a non-reactive pot... Thats a bit of a tough one. You're making an alkaline solution and basically (pun intended) all metals will corrode under these conditions, especially when heated for a long time. Maybe an enameled dutch oven would be ok? I am not sure if this is a health risk but from a cooking edutainment perspective, I think it's a bit risky to refer to metal pots as unreactive

Ready for Part 3: Frame-Perfect Corn Tortillas

The degree of intrigue you posses is staggering. Your videos not only make me want to try cooking these recipes myself, they encourage a desire to learn for the joy of learning. There’s many layers of teaching, entertaining, and more going on and I find it most impressive how much you cram in without using too many words. Cheers my friend, and thanks for all the wonderful videos!

thank you for respecting the varied skill level, interest level, and time commitment of your viewers. thank you for giving us permission to try things, "cheat" to whatever extent we want, and in general making food from a variety of cultures accessible to other people.

The look over to your coffee grinder and James Hoffman's guardian spirit speaking to you sent me 🤣🤣

My husband's grandmother still does this in El Salvador! And she uses un metate. She is in her 80s and still does it to this day. I hope I am able to meet her one day

why have i randomly pulled up youtube mere seconds after both corn tortilla videos were posted, annddd immediately watched both

3:30 Don't you dare tease us with the collab we crave!

You should try nixtamalizing other grains. In Vietnam, they do something very similar with rice to create cao lau

I can't even begin to imagine the effort and the trial and error that was required to bring us the "basic" knowledge about food preparation that we take for granted today.

This is an awesome series. I watched some of your second channel videos about creating content that is “generous” to the audience and this is a great example of that. You do the super complicated RU-vid chef stuff that no one would do at home but also leave us with interesting historical context and practical cooking tips.

Im from SoCal but currently working in Timor. Corn is the only grain grown here other than rice. I’ve been on a mission to make nixtamalized tortillas and grits. The convenient part is that cal is wildly available and often sold next to the corn, though people use it for the betelnut drug, not the corn. Took a lot of convincing for people to know it’s safe. The results have been wonderful! I absolutely would trade anything for Maseca

Heres hoping that part 3 or 4 is how to reheat corn tortillas.

Note from a wine guy: even though "varietal" sounds fancy, it is an adjective, not a noun. The noun is "variety". Example: This wine, which is made solely from the Inzolia variety, is a *varietal* wine. "Varietal" is awkward to use correctly in a sentence, and opportunities for its correct usage are infrequent, so it's reasonable that people have poached the word to mean "variety".... again, because it sounds fancy. Plenty of people in the wine world make this mistake. So don't feel too bad if you continue to use it that way. Also, glad I found your channel! You are wicked smart and I love your pace, tone etc. Have a nice day!

I loved the Hames Joffman comment with the grinder.

Who up nixtamalising they corn?

Man I respect sticking to your guns about the ads going at the end. I know you'll find sponsors that are on board with the vision. I hope the alternative support is still paying the bills

I appriciate the James Hoffmann reference, still continue to be a shining beacon on this hell site!

Man, it’s wild to me thinking about all these processes that ancient folks came up with, how they turned stuff that nobody would think to eat into something unrecognizable and delicious. Yet the world we grow up in today has commercialized it and it’s just normal to have them at the ready all the time

I can't believe this video didn't get 4 million views. This is an absolute master class

I bought the tortilla press featured in these videos from Masienda and some masa. It is AMAZING stuff. I had to get it mail order, so that took some time. Masienda sent me an email yesterday telling me that Whole Foods is now selling their masa. I think that's where I'll be getting mine from now on... Very interesting to see how it's made! And yes, it is amazing to think that an ancient culture figured it out.

Glad we didn't have to wait long for part 2! Can't wait to try making these for next date night, thanks for the great free content

I ate fresh tortillas with stone ground corn in Nicaragua and I can tell you they are really something else. Super satiating and a meal on their own.

The james hoffman joke sent me lmao. I've been eyeing the niche zero for a while now as a "endgame" upgrade to my espresso set up and I feel so called out now 😭

Nixtamalization helps the corn be absorbed by the body properly and this way you get Vitamin B3 (Niacin), and this helps prevent Pellagra. I read that when corn was sent to other countries that didn't know about Nixtamalization and they had a primarily corn-based diet, they were getting pellagra and didn't know why.

i am interested in a sope demosntration

Excellent video mr NetShack, some brilliant info to replace the life skills bloating my brain

That soo interesting...slinks back to the easy method.

I love your videos!!! Please keep on keepin on

I would probably do the Hominy and then just eat it. (Sautéed w/ some onion and butter,) And follow your gramma's advice. Thanks, I always enjoy your videos.

Your advertisers don't know what they're talking about. Yours are the only ad breaks I don't automatically skip through, because they don't disrupt the flow of your videos. They don't deserve to be on your videos, I say.

yo netshack you rock man thnx for the recipe, you have no idea how hard it is to get a hold of masa harina here in balkan vukojebina

For us Mexicans tortillas are like white rice for Asians, NO flavoring or salt are needed! the complex flavor come from your guisados.

I like how you put the sponsors at the end of the videos! I still watch to the end, it's just less intrusive because it's voluntary. This was a great video, also-I need to try making corn tortillas again soon.

The comment about your grandma telling you to use maseca sounds so familiar. When I told my Mexican mother-in-law (and her mother) that I'm learning how to make a variety of mole from scratch, they said the jars/cans at HEB and Fiesta are good enough and don't take 24hr+.

Yes. This is the way I do it. I propagate and grow my own corn, blue, green and yellow. I make my nixtamal then grind with a hand grinder and then grind it smooth with my metate. I find it very therapeutic.

This is an excellent example for why we should learn “primitive” techniques

Classic grandmotherly advice, "why are you going to all that trouble" 😂

Love your interesting information & anxious to try making my own tortillas. I think I will skip making my own ground masa. But, will follow your advice on making them the easier way. Thank you!

I appreciate the snark toward advertisers at the end.

Great follow-up to the first part. I've been looking to make my own hominy for a long while, but admittedly the hardest part isn't ensuring food safety, but I don't have a non-reactive pot. Off to get some blue or red corn! Also, I've found a meat grinder makes adequate masa out of canned hominy.

Ironically your ads are the ones I actually watch even though the format seems the most skippable

I love how he has 4 videos about how to make tortillas but no videos using them, a true nerd play

LOL James Hoffman Insert, Nice touch.

Great video! Will probably never make corn tortillas that way but its good to know. Not surprised ad companies don't like your end placement (and presumably the dry "x has paid to be mentioned at the end of this video"). I wish that RU-vid wasn't at the point of essentially needing a 30 second sponsor ad halfway through a 6 minute video but here we are. For what it's worth, I would prefer a sponsor midroll before you get into the meat of the video compared to later on.

didn’t think i’d have to wait this little awesome

Chefsteps has a flour tortilla video but they opt to add corn flavoring by mixing in blended canned hominy, including the canning liquid. You still run into the problem of adding enough dry ingredients to absorb all that liquid though.

Please show me how to make panuchos, the Yucatan frijole-stuffed tortillas, they were the best tortillas I ever had

I bet the wet grinder we use for dosas and melanging chocolate would work a treat for this, and they're pretty darn affordable.

Just watched video 1 for the first time today, my cup runneth over!

I mean honestly it seems like a fun family activity, as arduous as it seems.

Had a coworker who thought it was dumb that people venerated corn since they couldn’t digest it. Don’t mock cultures you don’t understand. Learn from them. Usually there’s something incredible going on.

Ashen One- be sure to bring more corn

3:30 hello ghost James

The plastic grocery bag squares was the missing keystone in my tortilla colosseum

Gonna try this with Grandma's ashes. RIP

i would love to see more ideas on what to do with masa - i got a bag of blue corn masa harina and definitely want to start using it, though since I don't have a tortilla press, i'd like to see what else can be done with the masa like Gorditas and other stuff. I know you don't need a press for tortillas, but it would be cool to have other ideas for stuff to do with it that doesn't necessarily require a tool

Reminds me of when I told my mom I'd started making parathas by hand, and ever since she always buys me a frozen 20-pack to take with me whenever I visit home.

He did it. The madman actually tackled nixtamalization... 😮

Brilliant video. Opened me up to a world of possibilities I previously thought unobtainable.

HEH THE GODDAMN JAMES HOFFMANN REFERENCE JESUS CHRIST I WAS EXACTLY THINKING OF THAT, you are a fucking legend man

Wonderful lesson on something i hadn’t heard of!

Dude, who the heck are you? You’re a mash up of Kenji Lopez alt and Alton brown of Mexican cuisine, thank you ever so much!

My samoan grandparents are the same when I try to learn a skill based on my heritage hahahaha

I came for an authentic corn tortillas recipe, stayed for the ‘Fight Club ‘ refrences.

I want a part 3 for practical recipes and reheating tortillas.

Ever try nixtamalizing other things, like other grains/seeds/legumes/nuts, kinda curious how that would go.

I really love your channel, my dude! Brilliant!

Really well done. Informative, interesting.

oh you're so right though, it smells SO good. I just make hominy for the aroma 🤪

This is much more helpful than that Modelo commercial

I thought this was the standard method until I just recently learned about masa harina on some random channel

The james hoffman clip

saw this upload notification and almost brushed it off as youtube recommending me the first one again

Don't think I've seen anyone else mention it yet, but good on you for sticking to your scruples on advertising.

Amazing video!! Thank you

Thanks!

Life can't be easy, can it be?? 😂 Jokes aside, a fascinating video. Very educating 👍 Agree about developing a deep appreciation for ancient people who figured it all out.

Part 3: The perfect fish taco with beer and cilantro-embeded corn tortillas. No cabbage slaw.

love the value of your videos :)

Awesome 😊

Now I just want a short vid where Shaq's family roasts him for being a tortilla nerd. Go abuela go!

After watching soap tutorials, I'm afraid to try working with wood ash because of the lye. I buy my corn dried in the Los Chileros brand pozole, and its already been nixtamalized with the cal so all I have to do is rehydrate it for 24 to 48 hours and then boil it like 3 hours. They have the white corn and the blue corn. I prefer it to the canned stuff. I don't have the patience to nixtamalize my own corn.

Grandma knows best

6:17 damn

How much would the metate have set u back??!!😂 I just found ur channel & love some of the comments. I'm sorry I didn't find u b4 leaving AZ...

you look like a guy my brother met at silent disco at electric forest a few years back. Ended up hanging out with the guy all night and then we lost him at the porta johns.

3:29 is that James Hoffmann? 🤩

I’ve always said the only gourmand perfume I’d ever buy is fresh masa

Someday I hope to get a metate. I hear they're like 50 lbs! I want one that is hand carved.

Very interesting, i'll have to try it!! I wish i knew spanish, how stupid of people not to educate me when i was a kid!!

Mortar and pestle for grinding?

As a kitchen apron fashion icon, do you have any recommendations for choosing the right apron?

Oh Boy, time to put all that ash from our pellet heating System to good use 🎉

In addition to the very informative video I’d like to point out one thing just keep it contextually relevant to the Nahuatl linguistics being used. The word tortilla is really not adequate for the product being described as that word originated for a dish in Spain then applied to something entirely different in Mexico. The most common mesoamerican word being in Nahuatl would be Tlaxcalli ( Tlash-Kah-LEE)