maybe use corn tortillas? or leave the sauce off longer?

Im not helping

 I'm a tortilla newb myself, I learned from a friend in California that you heat tortillas before using them to give them a more flexible texture. Try preheating them next time a lil bit?

  I usually nuke mine under 20 seconds before making roll-ups.

you might try baking just the tortillas for 3-4 minute before you fill them...not long enough to make them crispy so they break when you try to roll them; just enough so they're not so soft when you put your filling and sauce on.

Use real corn tortillas.  You may have a hard time finding the real thing - made with yellow corn.  I've searched for 2 weeks and the closest thing I found was white corn tortillas at Trader Joe's.  I know the local Mexican grocery store has them, but they only sell them in huge stacks.  I only want a dozen.  I'm writing Trader Joe's a letter asking for authentic, Mexican, yellow corn tortillas.

You just can't get authentic flavor and texture without them.

Flour tortillas are pasty by nature and just don't hold up in sauce.  They make for soggy enchiladas and burritos.

Making fresh corn tortillas is really quite easy -- my brother used to make them for us all the time.  Even in backwoods OH you should be able to find masa harina

-- the recipe is on the package.

its by the flour and comes in a bag just like it....a HUGE bag...hahaha

Tortillas are simply water, salt and flour. I  don't think your going to be wild about that bag stuff. What you should do is go to your favorite mexican restaurant and skip the chips, don't drink a soda and only eat half of a good enchillada.

Original Post by krwwebb:

Tortillas are simply water, salt and flour. I  don't think your going to be wild about that bag stuff. What you should do is go to your favorite mexican restaurant and skip the chips, don't drink a soda and only eat half of a good enchillada.

 Actually, real tortillas are lime ground corn and water.  The special flour is called masa harina.  Flour tortillas are, I think, a new innovation designed to appeal to northern tastes.  They just don't have that real Mexican flavor, if you ask me - just my opinion of course.

Making your own corn tortillas is fun! I use the masa harina "mix" that others have mentioned. It really isn't a mix - if you check out the label you'll see that it is basically just corn flour. All you need to add is water (and salt, if you like).

Keep your eye out for a tortilla press, if you are planning on making tortillas even semi-regularly. A tortilla press doesn't need to be expensive (mine was less than $10) but it saves a lot of time.

I agree with Claire. Flour tortillas are okay for certain things, but once you get used to corn tortillas, the flour tortillas are a bit bland and gummy. I would never use them in enchilladas, because they don't hold up well in sauce.

Flour tortillas tend to be higher calorie (although maybe that is just because they are bigger? I've never done a gram to gram calorie comparison on them. hmmmmm.). However, lots of cookbooks call for flour tortillas and I think it is because the majority of the population here isn't used to corn tortillas and many people dislike them.

Corn tortillas have a totally different texture than flour tortillas. They are a bit grainier, rather than being totally smooth. They also rip more easily. Corn tortillas tend to have very little or no fat, unlike flour tortillas.

You don't have to have a press to make tortillas, because you can roll them out with a rolling pin or just press balls of dough between two books or something. But the press definitely makes it easier.

I was curious about the flour/corn comparison, so I just looked it up. Looking at the same brand of tortillas (Mission, which is common at least where I am) here are the stats.

6" corn tortilla

2 tortillas = 80 calories = 37 grams

6" flour tortilla

1 tortilla = 80 calories = 26 grams

So the calorie difference per gram isn't huge (approximately 2 cal/g for corn and 3 cal/gram for flour), but you get two corn tortillas for the same amount of calories as one flour tortilla of the same size.