The Tortilla Test Every Great Mexican Restaurant Should Pass

When it's late at night and you're in a bind, a quick run to your local Taco Bell drive-through is a decent way to get Mexican-inspired food. But if you're craving the real deal, nothing less than al pastor tacos, cheesy enchiladas, or crispy flautas from an authentic Mexican restaurant will cut it. While there are a few ways to spot a fake from a mile away, the one red flag we always look out for is store-bought tortillas.

Let's just say that no Mexican eatery worth its cilantro would deign to serve anything less than house-made flatbreads. Whether that happens to be a corn or flour tortilla, however, will probably depend on the region the restaurant's cuisine hails from. Traditional corn tortillas, which originated in Mesoamerica (dubbed "the cradle of corn"), are still more prevalent in the southern states of Mexico. Flour tortillas, meanwhile, tend to be more common in the northern regions of the country, where they are thought to have been popularized by Spanish settlers who introduced wheat flour to the area.

But whether you're chowing down on corn tortillas at a Oaxacan restaurant or flour ones at a Chihuahuan joint, you know you'll be in for a really good meal so long as those soft and steaming discs of starchy goodness are called out as being crafted from scratch — preferably by somebody who is well-versed (and practiced) in the art of tortilla-making.

Sure, there are quite a few store-bought tortilla brands that we'd consider worthwhile (Olé Mexican Foods and Maria & Ricardo's are pretty up there, in our opinion), but even when we're whipping up a Mexican-inspired meal at home, fresh is always going to be best when it comes to tortillas. Luckily, cooking up your own homemade tortillas isn't all that difficult (which is all the more reason you should bee-line straight to an exit at any restaurant that doesn't).

Our recipe for easy from-scratch flour tortillas requires just five ingredients (including water), while our classic Mexican corn tortillas just need three: masa harina (dried corn dough), sea salt, and warm water. Plus, both take less than an hour from start to finish, and will leave you with more than a dozen fresh, bubbling tortillas ready and waiting to be eaten straight up, piled up with taco fillings, or rolled up into taquitos.

Just brush up on some of the biggest mistakes home cooks can run into when making tortillas in order to avoid them, from not using hot enough water to mix the dough to using the wrong type of surface to sizzle them on (for the record, a good nonstick griddle or classic cast iron pan will do). Lastly, make sure that your pan is hot enough and keep an eye on the bubbling surface; one a tortilla is overcooked, it goes from soft and tender to brittle and flaky — and at that point, you might as well head back to Taco Bell.