Flatout Flatbread Turkey Pinwheels

We arrived home from our vacation home on December 20, spent the day shopping before finally arriving home.  The next day we had a party that involved bringing a dish on December 21.  Now, I am good at pulling off last minute dishes but I was tired and had been feeling under the weather for well over a month.  One of my quick stand-bys is spirals which can be made with any type of filling using home-made or store bought tortilla shells.  We stopped at a Meijer's on the way home where I spotted a new to me product called Flatout Pinwheel Lavash Flatbread made in Saline, Michigan.  Essentially, this is a flour tortilla shell formed into a rectangle so you get more spirals out of it with less waste.  It is a lower carb, high fiber flat bread.  I popped two packets of 4 pinwheel lavash flat bread into the cart.

Lavash flat bread is an Armeenian soft, thin flat bread similar in texture to flour tortillas, shaped into a rectangle and traditionally  slapped against the hot walls of a clay oven.  It is popular in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the Caucasus.  Flatout makes five kinds of flat breads including lavash in a variety of flavours.  There were instructions on the back of the package as to how to assemble the pinwheels.  Pinwheels are similar to the ham spiral appetizers I make fairly often but with a few more ingredients.  What is important is that bit of null space in the middle.  Other than that you can basically do what you like.  Use these just as you would to make a regular wraps or spirals with your filling of choice.

I used a mixture of sour cream, Miracle Whip and garlic herb seasoning for the base mix (to the right) then topped with lettuce, smoked turkey, honey mustard, red pepper and seedless cucumbers.  On the other end (to the left) I used plain homemade Miracle Whip.

There are three tricks to getting nice results when making spirals.  First, you want to place the ingredients on top then roll tightly!  Second, you need that blank space.  Third you need the covered last third to hold it all together.  Once the wrap is tightly assembled, press to ensure tightness then turn so the long end faces you and cut across to form pinwheels or you can cut in half to form sandwiches.

Don't the turkey pinwheels look delightful?  I like that they were larger with room for more filling in comparison to using regular flour tortilla shells.  The actual wrapping style is similar to wrapping sushi so the presentation is a bit more colourful than some spiral appetizers I have seen or even made.  I really like the Flatout flatbread for this particular application which means the next time I make home-made tortillas, I may just be doing a bit of experimenting, rolling the dough out into a rectangular sheet then cooking it on the griddle.

New Flat Bottom Taco Shells

I have a rather well stocked kitchen at our vacation home but nowhere as well stocked as my home kitchen.  In this case rather than stocking with equipment to make specialty items, it is a bit more frugal to buy certain specialty items.  One of these specialty items is taco shells simply because it would not be frugal for me to buy a nice deep fryer, taco shell form and oil to serve tacos about three times a year if that at our vacation home.  While I do bring a few jars of my homemade salsa and taco sauce when we drive down, I can't bring enough to last much more than a couple of trips and the way we fly I can't bring any.

Instead I rely on Old El Paso taco dinner kits.  I really like Old El Paso in general if I have to buy anything taco related.  I've had good luck with this General Mills brand.  I think it was one of the first taco brands on the market ages ago shortly after Taco Bell opened in Canada.

Old El Paso is now offering taco shells and taco kits made with whole grain corn.  The Stand and 'N Stuff dinner kit is a fairly new product.  The neat thing is you don't need a taco holder to keep the taco shells upright while loading them.  The taco shells are flat on the bottom so they stand up on the plate without further support!

I made my standard beef tacos supreme loaded with beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sour cream and shredded cheese along with taco sauce and salsa.  Normally I add sliced black olives but didn't have any and didn't feel like slipping to the store for some.  I have to admit I don't deviate much from beef tacos when making tacos but Life Made Delicious has more recipes if you don't want to use beef.  Next time I am going to try their easy chicken ranch taco recipe.  It does sound quite yummy and definitely something that would be easy to make at our vacation home.  I like that the recipe uses a rotisserie chicken that will keep a bit of heat out of our vacation home kitchen while saving me a bit of time!  I will likely use left-over roasted chicken though at home while using rotisserie chicken at the vacation home.  I will report back when I make them.  I'm sure they will be delicious!

Second Attempt at Homemade Taco Shells

Taco Bell was one of the very few fast food restaurants I would indulge in for the tacos but it's on my hit list of never to eat at again restaurants so I am on a quest to make homemade tacos from scratch.  That means I want everything made from scratch including the shell and the seasoning.  This quest is all about creating the perfect taco!  During our last vacation I bought a tortilla press and masa harina.  My first attempt at making tortillas was encouraging.  With a bit of tweaking I should be able to get as good as if not better than store bought tortillas.  Tortillas can be formed into salad bowls and taco shells.  I was a bit disappointed in the first taco shells I made so was on to plan B.

Google is an amazing tool that saves an awful lot of leg work.  I made a note to check for some type of taco form the next time I was at a kitchen specialty shop.  Being rather impatient I did a search to find that such a character does exist then went onto eBay and purchased one.

The taco shell maker I bought is really a simply designed tool meant to get the perfectly shaped taco shell.  Now some would question why I would want to make my own taco shells since they are quite inexpensive.  The reason is quite simple in that I am after the fresh flavour of homemade.  Saving a bit of money on the cost of taco shells by making homemade is just an added bonus.  Making taco shells one at a time likely is not practical for a larger family but it works for our needs.  I'm sure there are taco shell formers available that will make more than one at a time.

Pictured is the taco shell maker in use.  I put a fresh made tortilla shell into the form then proceeded to fry it in the deep fryer.  Here I ran into my first problem.  The depth of my deep fryer does not allow the loaded taco shell maker to be fully immersed so the shell cooks all at once.  This is not a huge problem as it only takes a few seconds to fry on each side.  The second problem is the actual design of the taco shell maker that when flipped over to fry the other side leaves a gap of unfried tortilla at the handle side.  It is impossible to get this portion into the oil given the design.  The alternative is to use an open pot of oil on the stove deep enough that the entire form can be submersed.  While this is an option, it is not one I'm overly warm to since heating oil on the stove is more of a safety risk than using a temperature controlled deep fryer. 

There has been progress in my journey towards making homemade taco shells.   The end result were delicious homemade beef tacos.  The homemade taco shells were quite good but they are not the same texture as store bought taco shells.  Masa harina is quite a fine grind so the resulting taco shells are smoother and crispier than store bought.  I'm looking for a homemade taco shell closer in texture to store bought.  To my way of thinking using a corn meal mixture should give me what I'm looking for.  Corn meal is a bit coarser so I will be experimenting with that for the next batch of taco shells.  I will also try making them just a bit thicker as the ones made with the masa harina were a bit difficult to work with.  They kept tearing on me.  I also did not like that the shells made with masa harina had jagged edges.  While this doesn't affect the flavour it is an aesthetics thing.  So back to the drawing board for my next attempt that will hopefully be closer to what I'm after.

My Homemade Tortilla and Taco Shells

Here is currently snow covered Ontario I would not think twice about making dough for fresh baked bread for dinner.  In the southern US most would not think twice about whipping up a batch of homemade bisquits or corn bread for dinner.  The same applies to Mexican cuisine where taco shells and tortillas take the place of bisquits, corn bread or yeast bread.  I showed a short video of how to make homemade taco shells a few days ago. 

Rather than use store bought tortillas for wraps or pre-made taco shells I used the tortilla press to make both.  I did not do this because store bought tortillas and taco shells are expensive.  While I did end up saving on making both with 8 taco shells costing about 30¢ verses 12 store bought for $1.99 and 8 tortillas about the same verses store bought at $1.79 for 10, the primary goal of this exercise was not saving money, it was all about discovery and experimenting in the kitchen! 

Using the tortilla press was not difficult at all.  I ended up using two methods.  The first method involved using plastic wrap to sandwich the dough between for the taco shells.  The second method (pictured) used flour on the tortilla press.

To use a tortilla press you break off a piece of the dough, form it into a ball then press between your palms to flatten a bit.  Place the flattened ball in the centre of the tortilla press then close the top portion over the dough.  Pull the handle up over the top portion using enough pressure to flatten the dough.  The flattened, shaped dough is now ready for cooking on a hot griddle.

I followed the recipe that was included with my tortilla press.  The recipes was fairly straight forward but the results were not.  The tortillas were thicker than I would have like and it didn't matter how I adjusted the press the tortillas thickened up when cooking.  Now all is not lost because the tortillas I made are very similar to Greek style pocketless pitas so serendipity has given me another homemade product to do a bit of tweaking.  If I did them a bit thicker they would be just like the thin breads (Fill'ems) I was telling you about.  This really is what cooking is all about!  The recipe didn't work as I was expecting but I ended up with a result that works for another purpose.  I will be testing out more tortilla recipes in the very near future.

Making taco shells is a two step process using two cooking methods.  First the dough is formed into tortillas using a tortilla press and cooked briefly at 450ºF for 20 to 30 seconds on each side.  Next the cooked tortillas are allowed to dry then then are fried forming their shape with whatever kitchen utensil gets the job done to create the desired shape.  In the video the taco shells were fried in a pan on the stovetop first on one side then turned using spatulas to create the shape while frying.

Homemade taco shells are nothing like store bought other than shape.  Oh my the flavour is incredible!     Mine were a bit rough around the edges but considering this was my first attempt, I was rather pleased.  I used instant corn masa bought as a foodie find while at our vacation home in the fall.  This is made with 100% premium white corn.  te the shape while frying.  I decided to modify this to use my deep fryer and tongs making the whole process a bit easier and streamlined.  This method worked quite nicely.  Unlike store bought taco shells homemade ones puff a bit when frying.  I wasn't put off by this though as this just adds to the crunch.

Clearly I need to do a bit more practicing to get both the tortillas and taco shells looking closer to what I want but this really was a valuable learning experience for me.  First off a flub turned into another product that certainly will not go to waste.  It planted the seed as to how to make those new thin sandwich breads.  Homemade came in at 3¢ a piece for both taco shells and tortillas.  In perspective a family of 4 using 12  of either for one meal could save $1.56 on that meal which doesn't sound like a lot of money but consider if they had tacos twice a month for the year the overall savings would be $37.44, enough to make a difference.  The most important thing though is the whole experience has sparked the desire to explore a bit more to see how I can tweak the recipes and methods to get exactly what I want.