Altered Tastes: Tortillas In Mexico

Both Matt of mattbites and Ruhlman mentioned how fresh tortillas and salsas were his favorite experience during food blogger camp.  While I did not attend, I happened to be in a different part of Mexico around the same time.  I couldn't agree more.  The tortillas were unbelievably delicious.  I was in Cabo San Lucas, and even though everywhere I went I had completely different tortillas, they were all amazing.  During some of my adventures walking around town, I came across this place:

The folks at Perla were kind enough to let us take some pictures of there tortilleria operation.  Sadly, this is what I do on vacation.  These two women were what we first saw when we entered the factory.  They perform two really valuable functions: packaging and quality control.  You can see in the middle they have stacks in front of them as well as a pile of rejects.

The tortillas they were sorting were all coming out of this leviathan of a machine that is clearly cooking the tortilla.  I was trying to not be intrusive so I can't tell you exactly how this all works.  I do know that they were making both corn and flour tortillas.

This woman was pressing tortillas and tossing them onto a conveyor belt.  She was fast.  Like ungodly fast.  Like will not be replaced by a machine fast.  She always had a ball of masa in one hand and a tortilla in the other.  Every picture I have of this woman involves a tortilla blur streaking across it.

Eating tortillas in mexico totally schooled me.  I now know what a tortilla is supposed to taste like.   And now that means I can never buy packaged tortillas from a grocery store ever again.