Recipe - Homemade Lime Tortilla Chips

These chips must be had unadorned. I mean, you can use them to spoon salsa or guacamole if you'd like but you really don't need to. Why is that, you ask? Well, this recipe calls for your homemade tortilla chips to be soaked in seasoning prior to being fried but hey, I can't tell you what to do. If you want to go to town on a bowl of tasty dip, do it. If you don't want to, you don't have to because these are dang tasty. I had a bag of corn tortillas that I had no idea what to do with; then I wondered if I could make my own chips. Lo and behold, the internet held the answer and soon I was on my merry way. I made a mistake here or there in the process but definitely learned from them. The fixes are, of course, reflected in this post.

Step 1: Ingredients (yields 40-48 chips)

• 10-12 fresh corn tortillas, quartered
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 2 tsps kosher salt
• 2 cups grapeseed oil
• ghost pepper salt (optional)

Step 2: Prepping the tortillas
The longest part of this recipe will be in the preparation. Slice your tortillas into quarters. In a small bowl, mix together the lime juice and salt. I took me about four limes to get what juice I needed. Once the salt has dissolved, place wire racks on top of baking sheets (about two each). Then dip each tortilla quarter into the juice, let excess drip back into the bowl, and lay on the wire racks.


Step 3: Frying
You'll be leaving the tortillas on the wire racks for an hour or longer, depending on how quickly they dry. You want there to be no remaining moisture on the quarters because that can lead to splattering oil when you fry them up. In a small stainless steel saucepan, heat up oil on medium high. Test if it is ready by flicking a small piece of tortilla into the oil; it should bubble quickly. When hot enough, reduce heat to medium or medium low to allow for a thorough crisping and avoid burning. Place quarters into hot oil to fry and turn when the facedown side looks to be crisping up.


Step 4: Finishing
As you remove the chips from the saucepan, place them onto newspaper to best soak up excess oil. They should come out as a nice golden brown and take about 20-30 seconds each. I used chopsticks, actually, to get them out of the saucepan but if you have a wooden slotted spoon, that should work too. Duc wanted to season some of our finished chips with ghost pepper salt so we did; it was a kick in the mouth and on the lips! We enjoyed these with some fruity beer and chill conversation. Hope you enjoy making yours!


Photography by Minerva Thai and Duc Duong (because Minerva was trying not to burn the chips while frying!).