I love soul food. You know the type. It’s food that is made with simple ingredients that just hits home. It fills you up and it is made like it has been for generations. When you eat it, it just makes you feel good. Soul food is found all over the United States and you probably are imagining the last time you had a great home-cooked meal that fits this description. When we think of soul food, we often think of the flavor and the time put into the dish. We don’t always think of the practicality or its low cost. Many people don’t know that some of the best food and beverages were born out of hard times. At Fieldcraft Survival, we like good food and our employees often bring it in to share. You may know Jen Caro as @fabulousjennifercaro on Instagram or perhaps you know her as one of the folks who helps fulfill your orders. Did you know she is an absolute rockstar when it comes to making homemade tortillas? In this week’s blog, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite people to work with, use some of my media budget to pay for tacos, and share a great way to turn some simple ingredients (flour, lard, salt, butter, and water) into Jen Caro’s Homemade Tortillas.

The Background
Jen came to Fieldcraft Survival in the Spring of 2021. Jen’s family is from Mexico and she is our resident pro 2A, Latina, with a love for this country, and a singing voice like Celine and Whitney combined that you may hear whether you want to or not. Jen grew up in UT and she loves this country as is evident on her Tik Tok and Instagram accounts. When she comes to twerk…I mean, work, she definitely makes the rest of us smile. Jen is our resident taco expert and she takes her food seriously. I’ve stopped over at our production facility on occasion to find Jen’s homemade cooking out in the common area for everyone to try. As a self-admitted taco aficionado, I had to know how she made her own tortillas so I asked her if she would be willing to share her recipe with me and my (now ex) girlfriend. She was more than willing to provide it while I had a cerveza or two and learned from the master during a hands-on tutorial in my kitchen.

The Ingredients

3 Cups of Flour
½ Tbsp Salt
½ Cup of shortening or lard
1 Cup of hot water
1 Tbsp melted butter

The Process (Keep in mind the following process was conducted as mariachi, salsa, and modern Latin beats pumped through my Demerbox speaker. )

Jen starts the process of making tortillas by taking off her turquoise rings. In any other circumstance, I would think she is about to throw down but she was just preparing to create the dough. She mixes the flour, salt, shortening, hot water, and butter with additional butter a little at a time. Jen explained the dough needs a certain texture and consistency. That consistency is somewhat firm, not flaking, and uniform. Once that was achieved, Jen rolled the dough into small ping-pong sized dough balls before letting it sit for about 15 minutes in the bowl with Saran wrap over it. During this time, it allowed her to have some Patron and entertain us with her angelic voice using a baseball bat as a “microphone”. It was also during this time, she started on her homemade salsa which we were not expecting. She fire-roasted tomato, onion, and jalapeno before putting it into the Vitamix blender with some water, salt, pepper, garlic, and cilantro. This green salsa would become the perfect addition to the tacos.
Once the tortilla dough had time to sit, she rolled them out on my counter top with a little flour and used a bottle as her rolling pin. The dough was rolled out very thin and the non-stick frying pan on the stovetop was heated as hot as it could go. She advised that if the dough sticks to the rolling pin, more flour should be added but too much flour will eventually burn in the pan. Since the dough had its own fat, it didn’t need any additional grease. She moved the dough around with her hand and said that when it blisters immediately, you know the stovetop is hot enough. As the tortillas come off the pan, they are stacked on a plate with a regular towel to keep them moist. Jen said that growing up, all of her towels smelled clean but had a hint of tortilla because her family did the same thingMaking the tortillas is just part of the process; filling them is the rest of it. Traditionally, there are many different protein choices for street tacos including carne asada, barbacoa, lengua (yes, that is tongue), shrimp, pollo, and on and on. If you’re of the vegetarian persuasion or if fresh protein is hard to come by, canned beans can be used. Beans can be stored just as easily as the staple ingredients to make these tacos. For these tacos, we used a regular rotisserie chicken and stripped the meat from it before dicing it up. We added fresh cilantro, white onion, and some of Rikki’s favorite Cholula to finish these off. Another favorite way to fill them is with butter, cinnamon, and sugar.

The Takeaways

It doesn’t need to be Tuesday to enjoy a good taco. As a backpacker, I will attest I have carried tortillas with me into the backcountry instead of bread to make sandwich wraps and “protein delivery devices” for freshly caught fish. Much like the bannock I make in my 2-day survival courses for Fieldcraft Survival, these homemade tortillas don’t require many ingredients or specialized kitchen tools. Perhaps the most difficult part of the process of making these tortillas is finding a flat surface in the backcountry and a roller. Then again, water bottles can double as that rolling pin and a foam sleeping pad with a sheet of aluminum foil, a Pelican case, or the hood of a car, can serve as a preparation surface. I also realized that similar to pancakes, I don’t need to make a single mega-sized tortilla that is unwieldy but rather smaller street-taco size tortillas that can be made in smaller backpacking pans or an overturned lid of a cast-iron dutch oven. Look on Instagram and you’ll find plenty of creative cooking videos including some resourceful lads using a 55 gallon drum with a fire inside as a makeshift griddle. After learning how simple these tortillas are to make, I’m going to make sure to add them to my staple food recipes that can be made with just a few ingredients. If you recall during the 2020 pandemic, there were complaints that all the “food” was gone from supermarket aisles. The reality was, processed food was hard to find but ingredients were plentiful.
In a way, making simple and filling foods like Jen’s homemade tortillas is another example of the importance of being resourceful with limited resources. Mexico is not the only country in the world with impoverished populations. Low-cost and nourishing foods can be found in other cultures around the globe as well as that spirit of resourcefulness that should be coveted. Just like the gear we select, multi-purpose use is important and I can think of many different dishes I could make for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with these. Above all else, we should take the time to learn how others get by to increase our own survivability if hard times are felt again. Perhaps in the process of learning from your friends, you may have a good time, share a few laughs, and build your community in the process.