Category: Healthy Recipes

Seasonal, simple, delicious, nutritious recipes

How to make homemade corn tortillas

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN
Photo by Amber Engle

Making your own corn tortillas is fun and easy. With just three basic ingredients, a tortilla press, and a hot skillet, you’ll be on your way to having gluten-free, delicious, soft corn tortillas in less than an hour. You can use them for enchiladas, tostadas, tacos, nachos, and more.

How to make tortillas

Here comes the fun part. Although it is easy to do, you will need to be patient if this is your first time making homemade tortillas. There are times where the dough will feel dry or soggy. All you have to do is add more water or add more masa. As you make more homemade corn tortillas, you will quickly learn and enjoy the tortilla-making process.

Ingredients

2 cups of Masa Harina (not regular cornmeal or corn flour)

½ teaspoon of salt

1 ½ to 2 cups of warm water

Important: Masa harina is different from regular corn flour or cornmeal. In order to create masa harina, the corn goes through a process called nixtamalization, which involves soaking it in an alkaline solution (usually lime). This changes the structure of the grain which enables it to form a dough. It also adds calcium and makes the nutrients in the grain easier to absorb. Continue reading “How to make homemade corn tortillas” >

Which Appliances are Worth the Counter Space?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

In my house, kitchen appliances live in one of two places: in the kitchen or in the basement. The ones in the kitchen are the ones that I use constantly. The ones in the basement are the ones that only come out once in a while.

My Constant Favorites

Blender

This lives right on the kitchen counter because I use it almost every day. I have a Vitamix which is no small investment, but this workhorse has served me well for years. I’m actually on my second Vitamix. After 15 years, I decided to retire my original, and Vitamix has a trade-in program that gave me a discount on my new purchase. There are less expensive options, such as the NutriBullet Blender–and the Vitamix is more power than you’d need for smoothies. However, its heavy duty parts and high powered motor can also turn whole wheat into flour, nuts into nut butter, and other tasks that might cause a lesser motor to wheeze.

 

Instant Pot Electronic Pressure Cooker


I hesitated before jumping on this particular bandwagon because I’d never used a pressure cooker before and didn’t particularly miss it. Turns out that was just because I didn’t know what I was missing. Instant Pot fans tend to be a bit cult-like, but I’ve totally drunk the Koolaid. I use it to hard-boil eggs (perfect every time!), make stock in 30 minutes instead of two hours, cook hard beans and steel cut oats to tender (but not mushy) perfection in 15 minutes, and countless soups, stews, and one-pot meals. There are many sites, cookbooks, and Instagram feeds dedicated to Instant Pot recipes, so inspiration and instruction is never more than a click away. Easily the best kitchen purchase I’ve made in ten years.

Listen to my podcast episode: 4 Reasons You Need a Pressure Cooker. Continue reading “Which Appliances are Worth the Counter Space?” >

Create a world of flavor from just ten spices

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Fresh spices are the best spices.  But I’ll bet you have spices in your cupboard that have been there for longer than you can remember. Most likely, you bought them for a specific recipe and haven’t used them since.

It doesn’t make sense to have dozens of spice mixes gathering dust in the cupboard when you can create endless variety  with just a handful of foundational flavors.

I recently teamed up with McCormick Spice to create this fun infographic, showing how to create  a half dozen of today’s most popular flavor profiles using just ten basic spices. But the possibilities are endless!

Spice Recipe Poster