Have you noticed these trendy Half and Half Tortillas in your grocery store lately?
While most store-bought tortillas are either corn or flour exclusively, these use both in the same tortilla. Sound crazy?! You end up with a more hearty tortilla that still has plenty of corn flavor.
I’ve been meaning to experiment with them and finally got around to it this past week, and I’m glad I did! I thought they were total keepers and I think this recipe offers up a big upgrade compared to store-bought versions.
How To Make Half and Half Tortillas
My starting point for fiddling with these Mitad y Mitad beauties was the original Corn Tortillas recipe:
2 cups Masa Harina
1/2 teaspoon salt
1. 5 cups warm water
Masa Harina is dehydrated corn dough and it’s the easiest way to get homemade corn tortillas in the house. If you’re new to Masa Harina you can read more about it here.
I’m still using Bob’s Red Mill for Masa Harina lately, so all the batches in this post were made with this organic option:
But there are other good options for Masa Harina so don’t sweat the brand too much. This post compares Masa Harina brands.
For Batch #1 I just swapped out a cup of Masa Harina for a cup of all-purpose flour.
And I chose not to add any fat just to get a sense of my starting point. Note that corn tortillas are typically made without any fat or lard, while flour tortillas are the opposite and always contain fat.
So Batch #1 ingredient list looked like this:
1 cup Masa Harina
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water
Simply add some water to the mixture in the bowl and combine it as much as you can, then dump it on a work surface and add the rest of the water incrementally until it forms a cohesive dough.
To flatten the dough balls I pulled out the trusty casserole dish.
Note: that’s a Ziploc bag with the top cut off surrounding the flattened tortilla.
Then cooked them in a dry skillet over medium heat for 45-60 seconds per side.
And the result?
Very promising flavor but the insides were a little gummy, as if they didn’t cook all the way through.
So for Batch #2 I added the fat.
The original Flour Tortillas recipe uses a single tablespoon of fat per cup of flour, so I went with 2 tablespoons for this batch:
1 cup Masa Harina
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1 cup warm water
And yes, I used lard! Lard works wonders in flour tortillas so I wanted to try the real thing in these experiments. I used this home-rendered lard.
But keep in mind that you can use other fats to make tortillas at home. In the past I’ve used bacon drippings and olive oil and gotten equally good results:
Flour Tortillas Made With Bacon Drippings
Flour Tortillas Made With Olive Oil
So please don’t let the lard turn you off of these Half and Half Tortillas! I think you’ll be able to get creative with the fat and still get a good result.
Here’s how Batch #2 looked after cooking:
That plethora of brown spots is the fat in action and these tortillas were cooked all the way through.
And the flavor? It’s amazing what a difference some fat can make 🙂 I thought these were awesome and definitely an upgrade to the store-bought half-and-halfs I have in my area.
Next I wanted to experiment with the corn-to-flour ratio.
Batch #3 looked like this:
1 1/3 cups Masa Harina
2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1 cup warm water
And Batch #4 looked like this:
1 1/2 cups Masa Harina
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1 cup warm water
I wanted to see how much the flavor changes when you increase the amount of Masa Harina, but I have to admit that both of these batches were quite similar in flavor to Batch #2 and they came with a drawback…
As the amount of flour decreased they become more fragile and tougher to roll out.
At this point I was flattening them with the casserole dish and then trying to get them ultra-thin with a final pass of the rolling pin. Batch #4 couldn’t handle that and would break apart as I tried to peel the plastic away from the flattened tortilla. In hindsight this makes sense as the gluten of the flour acts as a binding agent and Batch #4 was only 25pct flour.
So I went back to the Batch #2 ratio and tried rolling them out much thinner than I had previously.
And they came out looking like this:
And they had all the characteristics I had hoped for when starting these experiments:
- heartiness from the flour
- plenty of corn flavor from the Masa Harina
- thin enough that the tortilla won’t dominate the meal
- a hint of savoriness from the fat
I’ll take it!
So the final recipe for Batch #2 looked like this:
1 cup Masa Harina
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons lard
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup warm water (plus more to combine)
With a final special note giving you full permission to roll these out ultra thin!
Okay if you’ve been wondering about Half and Half Tortillas I hope you try making these at some point. I was thrilled with the results and learned a bunch in the process. Awesome.
Buen Provecho.
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Half and Half Tortillas (Corn + Flour)
Ingredients
- 1 cup Masa Harina
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons lard (or fat of your choice)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup warm water (plus more to combine)
Instructions
- Add the masa harina, flour, and salt to a mixing bowl and combine well. Add two tablespoons of lard. I usually use my hands to crumble the lard into the mixture. Add 3/4 cup warm water and combine as much as you can with a spoon.
- Dump the mixture onto a work surface and knead until a cohesive dough is formed. If the mixture is dry and not coming together simply add additional splashes of water. If the mixture is wet or sticky simply add a few sprinklings of masa harina.
- Cover with a damp paper towel and let the dough rest for a few minutes as the pan heats up. Note: normally I let dough for flour tortillas rest for 30 minutes but I only let this Half and Half dough rest for 10 minutes and I did not experience any snapback when rolling them out.
- Preheat a dry skillet or comal. I used a tad over medium heat on my stove.
- Pull off a golfball sized chunk of dough and roll it between your hands. Surround the dough ball with plastic (I used a Ziploc sliced in half) and flatten it with a casserole dish. At this point you can optionally roll them out even thinner using a rolling pin.
- Gently peel the plastic off the flattened tortilla and add it to the pre-heated pan. Flip after 10 seconds, then cook each side for 45-60 seconds or until light brown spots are forming on the underside.
- As the tortillas cook you can roll out the next one to expedite the process. Store leftover tortillas in an airtight bag in the fridge. To re-heat, simply add them to a pre-heated, dry skillet and cook until warm.
Notes
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Lee
The dough is nice to work with and the flavor of the tortillas is good, however, I have to use my little electric skillet since my electric stove is unreliable. I make really small tortillas for testing, beginning at 200 degrees F and increasing 25 degrees at a time all the way up to 400 F. They never browned – I experimented with the timing, too, from the recommended time all the way up to 2 minutes per side. All I accomplished was making them dry out. I’m not giving up and will try again, since the dough is so very easy to work with and roll out!
Patrick
Thanks Lee! Hmmmm I haven’t tried making tortillas on an electric skillet but if possible I would crank up the temp even more to see what happens. Temp on a medium-high stovetop skillet is somewhere around 400F and that’s what I use — there’s a chance you might need to go a little higher on your device dependent on how efficient the heat distribution is. Cheers.
MaryM
Very nice clear recipe. I have an 8 pound tortilla press, so I was able to get these thin enough with a couple of presses. The dough was lovely to work with, but this has satisfied my curiosity about half and half tortillas. Casting no shade on your recipe, the flavor was stuck in the middle, not corny enough and not really flour. I make decent corn tortillas and decent flour tortillas, but I think I won’t be making the hybrid again.
Patrick
Hey thanks much for your note Mary. Cheers.
Beth
Hi, Patrick,
I just made my best tortillas, and I am freezing them for company at a later time. (Fish tacos!!!)
I finally used your suggestion of a Pyrex dish, instead of my tortilla press. (I will not go back!) I also, for the first time, made an attempt to get them thin (yeah, I’m a late bloomer), and it was just amazing how nicely they came out; I didn’t roll them, I pushed down with my hands/dish from the middle outward. (My best results were leaving the edges slightly thicker, so that they peeled off easily, without problems–namely tears.)
So, Patrick, thank you once again for being my being my teacher and inspiration.
-Beth
Patrick
Ahh good news! So glad to hear they turned out well Beth! Yeah now that you mention it I always reach for a similar Pyrex dish instead of the tortilla press lately, just seems easier to get ’em thin that way 🙂
Rain
Hi! I tried making these today and the flavor was great but I’ve been having a rlly hard time getting them to be soft/pliable enough for tacos. I followed the recipe so I’m not sure what I could have done wrong/should do differently, mine are just coming out v brittle.
Patrick
Hey Rain! Hmmm it sounds like they might be cooking for too long. I would try raising the heat a tad so it takes less time for those brown spots to start forming on the underside. Also keep in mind that they will always be most pliable when warm, so if they have sat for awhile before serving I will usually give them a quick reheat in the oven or on the stove. Cheers.
Jared Bauman
Stuck to everything. Wax paper, oiled wax paper, the pan, everything …Not a good recipe
Patrick
Hi Jared, I’ve been there and it’s no fun! This usually means there’s too much moisture/water in the dough — just add a few sprinklings of Masa Harina until you can handle it without it sticking to your hands. Cheers.
Chuck Panarella
Great recipe! I am new at this and these came out perfect in color & shape. My flour tortilla’s would shrink between the press & the pan. The added corn flour help them keep their shape. I shared this on Twitter.
Thanks,
Chuck
Patrick
Ahhh good news, so glad you tried these out Chuck! Cheers.
Beth Ritter
Patrick, I probably already told you how great this recipe is, and how I will be using it forever. My question is, will this work for sopes? Or, should I just stick to the recipe you posted previously for that, sans flour? Thanks once again,
Beth
Patrick
Thanks Beth! Hmmmm I haven’t tried that yet but I think it would work. I really like giving those Sopes a quick shallow fry and I’m not sure exactly how this recipe would respond to that, but it’s certainly worth a go. Maybe you’ll lose a smidge of that crispy corn flavor but I think they will still be super tasty. Cheers.
Beth
Patrick,
You made a good point about the corn taste possibly missing after the shallow fry, so I stuck with the sopes recipe sans flour–but did add 2 tablespoons of organic safflower oil. I think it helped the bottom crisp up nicely, along with the oil added to the pan. Thanks, and hope this isn’t confusing, as it belongs on the sopes page,
Beth
Patrick
Okay that’s good to know, thanks for the update Beth.
StephenC
Patrick,
Tried your preferred option a few weeks ago and was pleased, but wanted more corn taste. Yesterday, I took your preferred option and made the following alterations. I added 1 1/3 cup Masa to 1 cup regular flour. I added almost 1 1/4 cup warm water (per someone else’s comment). I made the salt a generous 1/2 teaspoon. Lastly, I added an additional teaspoon of lard above the two tablespoons.
I used a stand mixer with hook attachment and mixed until I had a firm ball.
These were awesome. Just the right texture and the corn taste I was shooting for.
Patrick
Ahh good to know, thanks much for mentioning your adjustments Stephen!