https://www.mexicanplease.com/3-different-masa-harinas-choose/

https://www.mexicanplease.com/corn-tortillas-using-masiendas-masa-harina/

There’s a good chance you’ve cruised past the Masa Harina in your local grocery store without realizing the potential you just left in your wake — but no more!

Most likely you’ve got one of these 3 options on your supermarket shelf:

From left to right: Maseca, Bob’s Red Mill, and Gold Mine.

Maseca is by far the most common and it’s the Masa Harina that I started with — you’ll frequently find it in the Latin goods section of chain supermarkets.

I’ve been meaning to test out a few other options and I’m glad I did as the results were a bit surprising! But first, here’s some quick backstory on Masa Harina…

Start with some dried field corn:

And soak it in an alkaline agent like calcium hydroxide.

This will improve the nutritional content of the corn and make it easier to grind up — it will also make it taste better!

After a good rinse you can grind it up and just like that you’ve got some masa dough on your hands.

Here’s how it looks in Cozumel’s supermarket:

Producers will take this masa dough and dehydrate it, resulting in Masa Harina, sometimes referred to as corn flour. It’s a powdered version of masa dough and all you need to do is rehydrate the Masa Harina and you’ve got a quick batch of masa dough on your hands that you can use to make corn tortillas, tamales, gorditas, etc.

So let’s do that and give some homemade corn tortillas a taste test using the different Masa Harinas.

You can see details on making homemade corn tortillas in this post, but I’ll go over the key details here as well. You’ll need:

2 cups Masa Harina 1/2 teaspoon salt 1.5 cups warm water

Stary by combining the Masa Harina and the salt.

And now add only 1 cup of the water and combine as much you can with a spoon.