Overthink my tostada

August 18, 2023 4:27 PM

I enjoy taking 3-4 hearty six-inch corn tortillas and making a layered stack with refried beans, cheese, veggies, and enchilada sauce spread on the inside, then baking it in the toaster oven for about 10-15 minutes. I love how the flavors meld and the tortillas get crispy at the edges. What I don't love is how it requires a knife and fork to eat. How can I retain these same ingredients, and speed/simplicity of preparation, but make the whole thing more convenient to eat?

Ideally I would be able to turn the pages of my 960 page book and eat this delicious lunch simultaneously with just a fork or by hand. What are some ways to make this whole thing hold together in a more convenient form factor? I want to make these on-demand using ingredients on hand, and not ahead of time.

Ideas I have already considered and rejected, please avoid suggesting:
• Pre-make a whole pan of enchiladas. Nope, too much messy prep work.
• Use flour tortillas and make a quesadilla on the stove. Nope, I require corn tortillas.
• Roll it all up and make flautas. Nope, too much work and the tortillas don't hold enough.
• Add copious cheese. Nope, I like using just a sprinkling of cheese for this.
• Nachos. Nope, please don't suggest using corn chips or deep fry.

posted by oxisos to Food & Drink (23 answers total)

Im sorry if this is too obviously but can you just cut up all your pieces first and then use a fork eat while reading?
posted by raccoon409 at 4:37 PM on August 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm assuming the reason you need to use a knife and fork is because the tortillas are too soft in the middle. The traditional tostada (which is one tortilla with ingredients on top) is made by frying. If your opposition to frying is the hassle, then can you just buy tostadas at the grocery store? If you don't want anything fried, baked tostadas are an option in some places.

If you want to make your own, brushing your tortillas with oil and then baking at a high temperature for a few minutes will produce a reasonable tostada. Add you ingredients once it is already crispy. You can try without oil if you must, but the result is likely to be fairly dry.
posted by ssg at 4:41 PM on August 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Use pre-fried tostadas, make two sort of sandwich style with two tostadas each, then each one should be edible by hand after cooling. You can cut them
Into quarters like a Taco Bell Mexican pizza (but better!) I think your toaster oven is maybe barely big enough to do both at once but maybe not. If not just eat the first while the second is cooking or cooling. This may also work with un-fried corn tortillas if they are fresher/higher quality/homemade, but I haven't had easy access to those for a while.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:44 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

What you're making are not what most people would called "tostadas," which are normally made with a crispy corn tortilla similar to a large round tortilla chip. So you could make actual tostadas, though I'm not sure that is what you want.

One idea might be to make what you're making but leave off the enchilada sauce and then just add a smaller amount of enchilada sauce or dip into it as you as you eat. You can also make quesadillas with corn tortillas instead of flour.
posted by vunder at 4:49 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ok, I realize it's not a real tostada, because I'm using soft corn tortillas. I don't want to use fried tortillas. If there is another name for what I am doing, please tell me! Yes I am picky about this, thank you for your suggestions!
posted by oxisos at 5:10 PM on August 18, 2023

What you're making are not what most people would called "tostadas," which are normally made with a crispy corn tortilla similar to a large round tortilla chip.

Yeah, what is being described seems more in the enchilada family (specifically, closer to New Mexican enchiladas which are made with stacked tortillas, nor rolled), though still quite different from typical enchiladas. Not that the nomenclature matters, as long as you are happy with your tasty results.

To the question, I would do two things. First, try reducing the amount of liquid (like wet vegies or extra sauce to see if it gets more manageable on the plate. Second, when it comes out of the toaster oven, use a knife to cut it into manageable pieces, then slide that onto your plate.

Or, you could try the reverse of that approach. Enchiladas (rolled or stacked) can be eaten with just a fork because everything bakes together with enough liquid for the tortillas to get soft. So using enough liquid (and the right shaped dish) could make things fork-ready with no knife needed.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:17 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Before putting the stack in your oven you could make 3/4 inch cuts all the way through at the edges, as if they were the ends of a 4x4 grid pattern of complete cuts, and then after it was cooked you might be able to use those cuts as starters to be able to eat it with just a fork alone.
posted by jamjam at 5:20 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you can tolerate a little prep, pour some enchilada sauce or similar into a sauce pan, bring it up to a simmer, then tear off some pieces of tortilla and toss em in. Simmer in the sauce a while until the the tortilla hunks are cooked through and have taken up some sauce. You have a pot of really basic chilaquiles.

Now drop those in an oven safe dish, add your toppings as usual, bake, and enjoy with a fork while reading your book.
posted by notyou at 5:52 PM on August 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think what you are making would be called a quesadilla (I was led astray into tostada-land earlier). Have you tried just heating up a pan, throwing a tortilla on there, topping it and either folding or adding a second tortilla on top, then cooking until sufficiently crunchy on the outside so that you can eat it with one hand?

Folding over a single tortilla will probably make an easier to eat package than topping it with another. If you're dealing with raw veggies, you might want to pre-cook them. If you have tortilla integrity issues because of salsa-related wetness, consider dipping in salsa afterwards, keeping the salsa away from the tortilla with cheese or beans, or using a more concentrated salsa. If your tortilla is falling apart when you are folding it, ideally try to get fresher tortillas, but if you can't, you can either dampen them with a splash of water and then soften them on a hot pan or freeze them and soften on a hot pan straight from frozen, then add ingredients and continue cooking.

This is actually a pretty common way to make a quick dinner in Mexico. Fun fact: In some parts of Mexico, a quesadilla doesn't even need to contain cheese, much to the chagrin of residents of the other parts of Mexico.
posted by ssg at 5:55 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

What about exploring some type of taquito format and dipping in enchilada sauce? I know people do DIY taquitos by rolling things in a tortilla and then air frying. Taquitos are definitely hand food.
posted by samthemander at 6:23 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

just cut up your tortillas first. (Stack them, cut strips, turn strips to cut across, cut into rectangles of convenient fork-eating size.) Do everything else the same, just instead of putting down a whole tortilla each layer, sprinkle your little tortilla pieces.

I believe this will get you closer to one-hand eating than quesadillas will. A quesadilla has to be pretty thin, not stuffed with stuff that can fall out, to not ultimately require a knife and fork approach.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:33 PM on August 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Cut the finished product in half or into quarters, wrap pieces in foil, wear apron while eating.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:59 PM on August 18, 2023

Is it an issue of letting it set after baking?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:16 PM on August 18, 2023

Cut them to size enough to fit a few mini-pie tins/small shallow dishes that can fit your toaster over. Proceed as usual. (This is to answer the maneuverability question; I'm less fluent on the varieties of Mexican food)
posted by cendawanita at 8:19 PM on August 18, 2023

How about—-baked tacos?

I don’t think it’s an actual thing, but I’m picturing something in between your current style and flautas. An open-face (open-sided?) flauta, perhaps? Use your same ingredients, but build the dish differently. The filling can either be layered, or your can mix it together first, then dollop it onto tortillas. (I suggest experimenting with single layer and double layers of tortillas.) cozy them up in a baking dish so each stays in a U-shape for cooking. (But they’ll relax back to flat after cooking if you let them.) Doubling the tortillas will help absorb liquid/prevent breaking.

A more simple solution, also mentioned above, would be to do exactly what you’re already making, but cut the tortillas before assembling. It’s essentially floppy nachos, baking unfried corn tortillas in-situ with all the toppings.
posted by itesser at 10:59 PM on August 18, 2023

This is a lot like how I make enchiladas, except I also coat the tortillas in enchilada sauce and then pour some extra over the top at the end (before the final coat of cheese). They cut with a fork no problem, so if you're open to adding sauce that would be an option. Or if you want to preserve the top layer crunch, you could add sauce to all the lower layers only, and then cut or tear the tortilla into bite size pieces and scatter on top so it still gets crunchy the same way (or use a scattering of tortilla chips as a substitute.)
posted by Lady Li at 2:15 AM on August 19, 2023

Change the geometry from.disk to tube. I wouldn't sat 'enchilada', so much as what an American deli would call a 'roll-up.

You can find videos on YouTube showing how to duplicate the Taco Bell crunchwrap.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:11 AM on August 19, 2023

You can buy pre-made tostadas, or deep fry your own. Ethan Chlebowski has an whole episode on this.. To make it hand-holdable food, the trick is you need them FRIED and thus, have integrity to hold food. Normal soft tortillas won't be enough.
posted by kschang at 8:43 AM on August 19, 2023

Copy the work of our esteemed culinary innovators over at Taco Bell and get a super big wrap to encase your melty crispy thing like a home style Crunchwrap. Preferably you’d make your tostada thingy, have the big wrap (made of non-wheat flour I suppose? They must make those for the GF people…) on a griddle pan or flattop already browning, you slide the tostada in the middle, fold the sides over in a sort of hexagon or octagon way, flip and brown again. Then it’s all encased in one big thing that you can hold in one hand. Bonus, you can shmear extra toppings beneath the tostada thingy if you want like maybe a salsa or sour cream or other thing you don’t want as heated up as the others. I think if you did this without browning the wrap it would still be viable just a missed opportunity for texture and yumminess.
posted by Mizu at 9:41 AM on August 19, 2023

Could you construct them a bit differently while maintaining the layering and cooking process? I'm thinking one folded tortilla and one tortilla cut in half. Assemble it by laying down one whole tortilla, spreading your bean layer on the right half of it, then layer on one cut half over it, next ingredient, etc, until you fold over the left half of the whole tortilla, enclosing it like a layered taco, and cooking as usual.

In this way you'd still have all your original elements, but the fillings wouldn't tumble out and you could hold it in your hand while reading. In order to get the same amount of food you'd probably have to assemble two of them in total, but might work?
posted by rachaelfaith at 10:35 AM on August 19, 2023

i think the single layer baked taco is the way to go. The beans and cheese should keep it folded in half as it bakes. You'll want to experiment with timing on when to flip it...generally the second side would need less time than the first. Alternatively only cook it on one side for the contrast of textures.

You will want to make your veggies to be cut small so that it will fold more easily.
posted by mmascolino at 2:26 PM on August 19, 2023

What you are making is a stacked enchilada.

There's no rule that says a quesedilla has to be flour tortillas. This is what I would probably do.

Alternatively make a taco: fill a corn tortilla with sauce and beans, and then fry it (If you don't speak Spanish enable YouTube English captions). Add the remaining veggies and cheese after frying. Usually the area around the filling stays pliable while the edges get crispy.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:35 AM on August 20, 2023

Mulitas are sorta quesadillas made with corn tortillas.

maybe made a triple decker Mulita?
posted by domino at 8:24 AM on September 12, 2023