NEVER Make Your Tortillas with Shortening Again — Try This Old MEXICAN Trick

That can of shortening with the flowers on the label has been sitting in Mexican kitchens since the 1950s, when the ads said it was cleaner, more modern, more American than what it replaced. What it replaced was manteca — real pork lard, rendered from the fat cap at the carnicería — and manteca makes a tortilla that holds together, folds without cracking, and tastes like something other than the griddle. This is how you make flour tortillas the way they were made before the can showed up, and why the science now says the old kitchens had it right. ⭐ TORTILLAS DE HARINA CON MANTECA (makes 12 to 14, about 45 minutes start to finish) - 3 cups all-purpose flour (the cheap sack is fine) - 1 tsp salt - 1 tsp baking powder - 1/3 cup manteca, the real rendered lard from the meat counter (not the can with flowers) - 1 cup warm water, maybe a little more - A comal or cast-iron griddle, dry ⭐ THE METHOD 1. Flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Stir it with your hand. 2. Drop the manteca in. Work it in with your fingers until it looks like wet sand. No chunks. If you can still see white streaks of lard, keep going. 3. Pour in the warm water. Stir with a wooden spoon, then use your hands. Knead it in the bowl for a minute or two until it's smooth and soft, not sticky. Too dry and it cracks. Too wet and it sticks. Add water or flour a spoonful at a time. 4. Cover the bowl with a damp towel. Walk away for 20 minutes. This is the rest, and you can't skip it. No rest means tortillas that fight the pin. 5. Pinch off a golf-ball-sized piece, roll it between your hands until it's smooth, then flatten it a little. Do all of them before you start rolling. 6. Flour the counter. Roll each ball out thin, about 8 inches across. Turn it a quarter turn after every pass with the pin so it stays round. Thin enough to see light through it. 7. Heat the comal over medium-high. No oil. Slap the tortilla on. When it bubbles and gets brown spots underneath — 30 seconds, maybe 45 — flip it. Another 30 seconds. If it puffs up like a balloon, you did it right. 8. Stack them in a towel as they come off. They steam each other and stay soft. WHY MANTECA, NOT SHORTENING: lard is one ingredient. Shortening is soybean oil run through a chemical reactor with hydrogen until it goes solid, then deodorized. The can lasted longer on the shelf and the company made more money, so the ads said it was progress. But a tortilla is flour, water, fat, and heat. When the fat is one thing and not a science project, the dough holds its water, rolls without tearing, and folds around your taco without snapping in half. Shortening dries out. Manteca doesn't. THE HONEST WORDS (straight, like a shop estimate): - Manteca from the meat counter, white or pale cream, keeps two weeks in the fridge, six months in the freezer. Not the shelf-stable tubs. Those are hydrogenated. - Too stiff and they crack → more water in the dough, or you rolled them too thick. - Won't puff → comal wasn't hot enough, or the dough didn't rest. - Tough and chewy → you kneaded it to death, or the comal was too cool and they baked instead of blistered. - Sticking to the pin → more flour on the counter, less water in the dough. - Don't eat pork → the old kitchens used lard because pigs lived in the yard. Yours doesn't. Sub in butter. It's one ingredient, it's solid at room temp, and it makes a tortilla that folds. Oil doesn't. WHO PROFITS: the shortening company convinced a generation that the can was cleaner than the butcher, and every bag of tortillas on the shelf now lists hydrogenated oil in the ingredients. A pound of manteca from the meat counter costs about what the can costs, makes better food, and you can read the ingredient list out loud without a chemistry degree. THE HABIT: make a dozen on Sunday. Eat them warm with butter and salt, or wrapped around refried beans, or with machaca and eggs in the morning. They keep three days on the counter in a towel, a week in the fridge, two months in the freezer with parchment between them. Reheat on a dry comal for ten seconds a side. A comal, a bag of flour, and a tub of manteca in the fridge means you're twenty minutes from hot tortillas any night of the week. And the car that got you to the carnicería for that manteca? That's the other half of my life: 🔧 Carlos Herrera → https://www.youtube.com/@CarlosHerreraYT Make them this weekend. If you only change two things: real manteca, not the can, and let the dough rest for twenty minutes before you roll. Then tell me in the comments what your family used — manteca, shortening, butter, or oil — and whether the tortillas puffed. I read every one.