Caramelo tortillas are Sonoran-style flour tortillas made from four ingredients: flour, water, a fat and salt. For a homemade version of the avocado oil variety, rub a quarter cup of oil into two cups of flour, add salt and hot water, knead, rest the dough for half an hour, roll it very thin and cook each tortilla on a dry, hot pan for about half a minute a side.

What Caramelo tortillas are

Caramelo is a tortilla maker in Lawrence, Kansas. It describes its product as Sonoran-style flour tortillas made with four simple, non-GMO ingredients and no preservatives, in three varieties: with pork fat, with duck fat and, for vegetarians, with avocado oil. The tortillas are sold fresh and shipped to the door.

The company was started by Ruben Leal, who comes from Hermosillo in Sonora, according to a profile by the restaurant Fox and Pearl. The same profile gives the four ingredients of a Sonoran tortilla: flour, water, some kind of fat, usually pork, and sea salt.

The recipe below follows that list. It is not Caramelo's formula, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Caramelo.

Recipe

Sonoran-Style Flour Tortillas

Thin Sonoran-style flour tortillas made from four ingredients, as Caramelo makes them — flour, water, avocado oil and salt, cooked on a dry pan. Eight 9-inch tortillas.

5.0 (1)

Prep: 20 min
Cook: 10 min
Total: 1 hr 10 min
Serves: 8
Cuisine: Mexican

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup avocado oil
2/3 cup hot water

Instructions

Mix the flour and the salt in a bowl. Add the oil and rub it in with the fingertips until the flour looks like damp sand.
Pour in the hot water and stir until a dough forms. Knead it on the counter for 5 minutes, until smooth and elastic.
Cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Divide the dough into 8 balls, cover them and let them rest for 10 minutes more.
Roll each ball on a lightly floured surface into a round 9 inches across, thin enough to see the counter through it.
Heat a dry cast-iron pan or griddle over medium-high heat. Cook each tortilla for 30 to 40 seconds a side, until it puffs in places and shows brown spots. Stack the cooked tortillas in a clean towel.

Nutrition

Calories:: 175

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Rolling them thin

Two rests. Rested dough rolls out and stays out. Dough that has not rested springs back.
From the centre outwards, with a quarter turn after every pass, so that the round stays round.
Little flour. A heavy dusting burns on the pan and tastes bitter.
Thin. Held up, the tortilla should let light through. A thick one cooks up stiff.

There is no baking powder in the list of four, and none here. The puffing on the pan comes from steam.

Avocado oil, lard or duck fat

The card uses avocado oil, Caramelo's vegetarian variety. For the pork version, replace the oil with 1/3 cup of lard, rubbed in the same way; for the duck version, with 1/3 cup of duck fat. Solid fats make the dough a little softer to roll.

A caramelo, the Sonoran taco

The word caramelo is also the name of a dish. San Diego Magazine describes it as a Sonoran specialty in which carne asada and melted cheese are sandwiched between two crisp flour tortillas.

To make one, lay a tortilla in a dry pan over medium heat, cover it with 1/3 cup of shredded melting cheese, such as Monterey Jack, and 3 ounces of chopped grilled steak, and set a second tortilla on top. Cook it for 2 minutes a side, until the tortillas are crisp and the cheese has melted. The Taco Bell seasoning on this site is one way to season the steak.

Keeping tortillas soft

Fresh tortillas go from the pan straight into a towel, where their own steam keeps them soft. In a closed bag they keep 2 days at room temperature or a week in the refrigerator, and they freeze for 2 months with parchment between them. Ten seconds a side in a hot dry pan brings one back.

The same tortillas, at 10 inches, wrap the cheesy double beef burrito and fold into the Taco Bell cheese quesadilla on this site.

Caramelo Tortillas Recipe

What Caramelo tortillas are