How to Make Restaurant-Style Tortilla Chips and Check a Named Product for Flour

What this guide helps you do

People often ask why chips at Mexican restaurants are so good. No single answer covers every kitchen. At home, you can aim for the same style with a documented frying method: fry cut corn tortillas in hot oil, in batches, and watch the oil's bubbling to tell when they are done. This guide covers that method. It also shows how to check whether a specific packaged chip lists flour, which helps when you plan to buy chips instead of making them.

Use the frying method when you want plain fried chips for salsa or guacamole, or as a base for other dishes. Rick Bayless fries chips this way before he sauces them for chilaquiles, so the same pieces can go either way.

What you need

12 corn tortillas, 6 inches across, about 10 ounces total. Bayless calls for cold or stale tortillas.
Oil to fill a skillet 1 inch deep.
A deep, heavy skillet.
A way to tell when the oil has reached 360°F.
A skimmer, slotted spoon or tongs to lift out the chips.
Paper towels for draining.
A knife to cut the tortillas.

The method does not name a particular oil or say when to add salt. Choose those yourself.

Step-by-step: frying the chips

1. Cut the tortillas into wedges or strips about half an inch wide.
2. Check how they feel. If the pieces are moist, spread them in a single layer and let them dry briefly before frying. Cold, stale tortillas are the intended starting point.
3. Pour oil into the deep, heavy skillet to a depth of 1 inch and heat it to 360°F.
4. Fry in batches rather than all at once.
5. Fry each batch for about 2 to 3 minutes, until most of the bubbling stops.
6. Lift the chips out with a skimmer, slotted spoon or tongs and drain them on paper towels.
7. Bring the oil back to 360°F before you add the next batch.

How to tell when the chips are done

Watch the bubbling more than the clock. When the tortilla pieces go into the 360°F oil, the oil bubbles hard around them. Bayless takes the chips out when most of that bubbling has stopped, which usually happens within about 2 to 3 minutes. If a batch is still bubbling hard at the 2-minute mark, leave it in a little longer and keep watching.

Your starting tortillas change how this goes. Moist pieces bubble more, which is why the method calls for drying them first. Frying in batches also gives you a clear bubbling cue for each load.

Do tortilla chips have flour? Checking a named product

Answer this one product at a time. Don't assume all tortilla chips are the same. The ingredient list for the exact product you are buying is what counts.

Example: the official Canadian product page for Tostitos Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips lists four ingredients: corn, vegetable oil, salt and calcium hydroxide. Wheat flour is not on that list. That finding applies only to that Canadian product and that ingredient list.

Don't carry that result over to the US bag. The US product page for Tostitos Original Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips does not show a complete ingredient list. Its descriptions of corn flavor and masa do not count as an ingredient list. If you are buying the US product, read the ingredient list on the bag you have.

An ingredient list also cannot tell you about cross-contact during manufacturing or in a restaurant kitchen. Chips at an unnamed restaurant cannot be matched to any packaged product either. If you are asking about a restaurant, first find out exactly which chips it serves, or ask the kitchen for its ingredient information.

A simple label worksheet

The worksheet below is an illustrative template for recording what you find on a package. It is not real data for any product.

Field	What to record
Exact product name	The full name as printed on the package
Country	Where the package is sold
Package size	As printed
Label date	The date on the package or label
All ingredients	Every ingredient, in the order listed
Wheat ingredients	Any wheat ingredient the label names
Corn ingredients	Corn ingredients, recorded separately from wheat
If it's a restaurant	The exact chip identity, or the kitchen's ingredient information

Use the same check for homemade chips. The method above starts with corn tortillas, so read the ingredient list on your tortilla package for any wheat ingredient before you fry.