I had a craving for Fritos but no money. But I have cornmeal.
I kept finding the same recipe over and over again, but after following it I could definitely tell that there were errors in it.
So I did a second batch with minor variations. The second batch is better. But not perfect. More testing is needed.
Cost per batch: 20¢
80 grams of cornmeal
295 grams (1.25 cups) boiling water.
1 tsp salt.
1 tsp oil
Preheat oven to 375f.
Mix the salt and cornmeal in a bowl.
Add the boiling water and mix until you get a loose paste.
Add in the oil and mix it in.
Lay down a piece of parchment paper large enough to fit your baking sheet.
Pour the mixture into the center of the paper. Put a second sheet of parchment paper on top.
Roll out to 1/3 inch thick. Transfer to the baking sheet.
Peal off the second sheet.
Use a butter knife to score the batter into half inch strips and then again into two inch lengths.
Bake until golden. Remove from oven and let cool.
Break apart into individual chips. Deep fry at 350f for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain on paper towel. Sprinkle additional salt (optional). Cool and serve.
Issues: Salt level is too high. Even 1 tsp of kosher salt is too much. Maybe 1/2 a tsp and a 1/4 tsp for dusting would be better.
1/3 inch thick seems way to thick. First test batch wax 1/8 and was top thin. Resulted in more snap than crunch. Second batch was closer to 3/16 and was definitely truer to the original. Maybe try 1/4.
The baking time and temperature are extremely off. Even at 1/8 inch thick it took closer to 20 minutes to even get to just “golden on the edges”. At 1/4 the temp and time definitely need adjustments. I’m thinking 425 and 15 minutes.
The flavor isn’t quite right. It needs something else. Onion powder, brown sugar, MSG, honey, garlic powder, and spices are all listed as ingredients by the manufacturer but clone recipes don’t have any. The amounts must be pretty small. But they are obviously having an effect. I’m thinking brown sugar and onion are the biggest players but that Uncle Roger would want a pinch of MSG too.
Parchment paper bottom: yes Parchment paper top? No. Use wax paper for better separation when you peak it off.
Just cornmeal? I thought fritos would be masa. Corn meal doesn’t make a good dough. You can’t make tortillas from it. You have to nixtamalize it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
Makes corn meal pliable.
That would result in a tortilla chip.
Not exactly. Tortilla chips are dried before frying. Fritos are not.
Tortilla chips are cooked before frying. But the key difference is that they are using masa not cornmeal. I’m sure that if I had a pressurized extruder with a cutting arm like an industrial pasta machine that there would be no reason to cook or dry these Fritos at all. They could go straight into the fryer.
Nixtamalized corn would produce a very different texture than a Frito. I’m not even sure you could get nixtamalized corn in the granuale size that is visible in Fritos.
This tour of the fritos factory calls the dough masa, which implies they’re nixtamalized, not just cornmeal. https://youtu.be/xJDKrMgBhUg?t=824
Watch the whole video. They are using masa as a general term for ground corn. They take us through the whole corn cleaning process to remove the outer layers and get to what they are calling masa. There is even a whole section in the video on “what is masa” and not once is nixtamalization or lime mentioned. In the video it goes from fully cleaned and soaked in water only to ground to shaped with no lime treatment.
Last Frito bag I looked at didn’t list any spices at all, just salt.
Curious.
Paprika or BBQ sauce would probably fill that seasoning gap. I’m wondering if dehydration might work better than baking, could be a 1000% worse though.
I thought about it. I think that oil added to the mixture I think is there to create bubbles while it’s baking. Dehydrating will create great dense chips. In addition to grammatically increasing the batch time
Looking at Fritos details. They’re using calcium hydroxide to create masa, which is probably where you’re starting, but then they extrude the mix before frying. That mechanical process affects the corn like kneading does for flour. Baking might not be needed at all.