Chips and Salsa, From Scratch

Oh yes, it’s back!  Here come From Scratch Weekends after a super busy summer.  This may not be a whole meal, but on Sunday it seemed perfect to make this snack from scratch.  Ryan was already planning on some salsa, so I took that as an opportunity to make tortilla chips from scratch.

I got myself set up with the masa…
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and Ryan set himself up with some tomatoes, hot peppers,
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and onion.
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I had never made my own corn tortillas before (we made flour tortillas once before), let alone chips from them, so I knew this was going to be a learning experience and likely time consuming.
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It is really easy.  You mix the masa with warm water following the directions on the package.
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Then it forms up into a ball as you work it together.
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In the meantime, Ryan was chopping the veggies for the salsa.
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We blended some up.
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Then I rolled the dough into little balls while Ryan finished up the salsa.
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Since we have a very nice electric griddle, we used that to make the tortillas.
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Ryan put the finishing touches on the salsa by adding chunks back into the blended tomatoes.  There was no recipe for the salsa, we just made it using the basics of a regular tomato salsa and mixing it all together.
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When Ryan was finished with the salsa he helped me make the tortillas.  We started off with flattening the balls in between 2 pieces of wax paper, but this started to be difficult and wax was getting in the food.
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As you can see these are not a perfect shape, but of course we did not expect them to be because we are not expert tortilla makers.  We did discover that it would be nice to have a tortilla press.
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Not too bad for the first try.
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Then we got smart and put the dough in a plastic bag and rolled it out that way.
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It also helped the process to go a little faster.
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Since we had some tortillas ready to go, I started cutting them into chip like pieces.
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We put them in the oven to make them crispy and chip-like.
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We made a lot of tortillas, so we wound up with a lot of chips.  This is only a picture of a few from the first batch.
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There you have it, chips and salsa from scratch.
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YUM!  Actually super yum and fresh.
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I will say that some ships were chewier than others and some were extra crispy.  Between the multiple batches this was bound to happen.  In the end, these are a lot better for you than store bought chips, and I can official say I have made my own chips and salsa entirely from scratch.

QUESTIONS:  Have you made anything from scratch recently?  Have you ever made your own salsa?  What do you like in your salsa?

6 comments:

Gina; The Candid RD said...

I love making my own salsa!! I make mine completely differently than you, but whatever, like you said, it really doesn't matter, as long as the components are there. I like mine EXTRA chunky, so I don't even puree anything. I throw in whole chunks of all the ingredients, and enjoy. I have never made my own chips (tortilla chips...) so I'm very impressed!

Beth said...

Wow--I'm impressed at the home made tortillias and chips! My version of homemade is to cut up and toast corn tortillias!

Unknown said...

of course we have made salsa w/ tomato and jalapeno from the garden. we have also made tortillas: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=13081280

This weekend we made a pork shoulder and baked beans from scratch. w00t!

Emily said...

you two are so creative! i've only made my own tortillas once, and it was a ton of work. i agree, i think a tortilla press would be nice!

homemade salsa is so much better than regular storebought salsa. it definitely tastes much fresher!

Lele said...

I had no idea it was so easy to make tortillas! Or that you could make them with just water! (Er, most of the "authentic" recipes I've read have LARD)

sophia said...

OMG. When you said chips from scratch, I was thinking just tortilla from the store, fried. You're just INCREDIBLY AMAZING.When are you having your own cooking show?

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