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¢
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.