After a whirlwind first week back at school and a
jam-packed weekend helping with a study, we de-stressed by bringing out our
inner Mamacita!
In this house, tortillas go with everything. Whole wheat,
flour, yellow corn, blue corn….we love them all. The only problem is that
calories can add up quickly. The real, authentic flour tortillas can easily
pack on nearly 200 calories and 5g of fat. And those giant sheets they call
tortillas at Chipotle? Just one of those adds nearly 350 calories and 10g of
fat to your day, and that’s just the outside of the burrito!
Megan and her dad found this awesome tortilla recipe on a
great vegan blog over winter break and loved it. Needless to
say, we loved it too. The only oil in these tortillas comes from walnuts, which
are made up of heart-healthy polyunsaturated fats (the good kind!). They’re also
low in sodium and are a good source of fiber, all for a guilt-free 90 calories.
Plus, they taste way better than store-bought whole-wheat tortillas. And don’t
worry if you don’t like walnuts—you can’t taste them at all. I know it sounds
too good to be true, but believe us—it’s true!
Grab a friend and set aside a couple of hours for this
recipe. You’ll have fun mixing, rolling, and flipping, but these tortillas
require lots of love. Don’t worry though—all the love you put in, you’ll get
back double. We’ve enjoyed our tortillas spread with PB & J, slathered in
salsa, and wrapped around scrambled eggs. They’re so versatile, and
our refrigerator and freezer will both be stocked for a while.
You’ll need:
- 2 cups warm water
- 1 cup rolled oats
- ½ cup walnuts or pecans
- 1 ¼ tsp salt
- 4 ½ cups whole wheat flour
Making the dough:
·
- Combine the warm water, rolled oats, walnuts and salt for a few minutes in a blender. Make sure the mixture is thoroughly blended (smoother than in the picture below), since you want be sure to make a smooth dough.
- While you have the blender going, put the flour into a large mixing bowl.
- Pour the batter from the blender into the flour, and start to combine. You can use an electric mixer if you have one, but if you’re a grad student with limited supplies (like us!), a little elbow grease works just as well.
- Mixing might take a while, but with a little persistence, you’ll get a smooth dough.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a most towel, and let it sit for approximately 30 minutes.
Making the tortillas:
- After the dough has been set aside, you’re ready to separate it into individual balls. We just so happened to have exactly 45 oz of dough, so we made 1 ½ oz balls of dough (about the size of a golf ball) to make 30 tortillas.
- Sprinkle some flour on a flat, clean surface, and start rolling! You can make your tortillas as thick as you want. With some extra rolling you might get your tortillas up to about 10 inches in diameter, but ours were about 8-9 inches each.
- Be sure to cover the dough you aren’t measuring or rolling so that it doesn’t dry out.
- When you’re ready to cook your tortillas, heat a large skillet over high heat. Place a tortilla on the skillet and flip once it starts bubbling—keep an eye on your tortillas because this might not even take a full minute (depending on how hot your skillet is).
- Cook the second side until you see bubbles, and repeat for the rest of the dough.
Ok…get ready to see this amazing nutrition breakdown:
Per 1.5oz tortilla:
- Calories: 90
- Fat: 1.5g
- Sodium: 80mg (less than 4% of the daily value)
- Carbohydrate: 15g
- Fiber: 2.2g
- Protein: 3g
