corn tortilla chips

Corn tortillas start out as a moist dough—called masa—that’s flattened and cooked on a hot griddle. To turn soft, flexible tortillas into hard, crunchy tortilla chips, we first need to get rid of as much water as possible. As the tortilla wedges bake, the heat in the oven turns much of their water into steam, which evaporates into the surrounding air. The other secret to these crunchy chips? Vegetable oil. The layer of oil on the surface of the tortilla wedges doesn’t evaporate in the hot oven. Instead, the oil absorbs the oven’s heat and helps the chips’ surface get even hotter. This encourages even more water evaporation and helps the chips’ surface turn golden brown. Enter your finished tortilla chips in The Battle of Crispy versus Crunchy to see whether they live up to their crunchy expectation.