What would you do if you suddenly could no longer eat your favorite food — a food of enormous cultural significance to your family, a food everyone ate together, bonded over?
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As a teenager, Veronica Garza was diagnosed with multiple autoimmune conditions. She went off grains, and that’s helped her manage her conditions in a huge way. But that meant no more corn tortillas, kind of a bummer for someone from a big Mexican-American family in Texas. So she and her family got together and made some grain-free tortillas.
Ta-da! And so Siete Family Foods was created. And the company sent us some to try.
The grain-free tortillas come in two varieties. One is made with almond flour and is vegan. The other is made with cassava and coconut flour with organic, pasture-raised pork lard. They don’t exactly taste like masa, but they don’t taste like almonds or coconut either. They have more of a neutral, vaguely nutty taste that will work well with any salsa or taco filling.
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Here are the rotisserie chicken, kale, radish and salsa verde tacos I made with the tortillas. I can’t remember which is which, but both varieties are represented here.
The tortillas are about as pliable as most mass-produced corn tortillas are, but I noticed that the longer you cook them, the less pliable they become. Siete recommends cooking them for just 15 seconds per side on the griddle or comal, and that sounds about right to me. (Or you can nuke them in the microwave.)
You guys, I got super excited over these tortillas. I mean, I am a food nerd, 100 percent. But seriously, we get hit up by companies with gluten-free this and grain-free that all the time. You know we hardly ever review products for SheKnows. But I love the way Siete is reinventing a Mexican staple with new ingredients, and it actually works.
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And I also love that we have these tortillas because a family rallied around a teenage girl and cared about her enough to create a special food they all could enjoy together. They solved a problem. With tortillas. Honestly, could you ask for a more American story than that?
Anyway, you can get them from some Whole Foods and natural groceries around the country, or you can order them online.
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