Necessity is the Mother of Invention

After almost 5 years we are now enjoying CORN tortilla chips on Sunday nights.

Our tradition has been reinstated. 

“Where there is a will there is a way,” pretty much sums up my dear husbands work ethic and determination. So for about a year and a half of researching and overseeing the project, Sarah and James have produced homemade corn tortilla chips. Now my business gets to take the credit for their hard work and determination. About a year ago two stores started stocking some tortilla chips. Spar Grocery and Woolworths. Both are imported from South Africa and as soon as they hit these stores , each selling their own brand, they are gone. So it is hard to find them...until now. 

We are selling them. 

A few weeks ago marked the first grocery store (Melissa's Supermarket) that bought them as well as the only mexican restaurant in town. In all of Zambia as far as I know.  Two other cafes are stocking them as well. (Blue moon Cafe and The Deli). They are a big hit and we are selling them as fast as we can make them. Yesterday a woman trying a sample at the market said she felt like she was back in Texas! 

It is hugely labor intensive taking about 8 hours of work to make 10-15 bags of chips.

Is it really worth it then? 

Absolutely.

We are increasing production and have a full-time employee now that only makes chips. All day long. 

First the corn is boiled and soaks 12 hours. Then the corn is drained and ground into a fine grain. We currently only have a small hand grinder and so for a while it had to be  ground through twice to get the texture right. Then it is taken and made into a dough.

Then the dough is rolled out into tortillas and pressed flat and thin and then hand rolled out some more with a rolling pin. From there they are cooked on each side, then cut into triangles. Then Fried, then salted, then cooled and packaged. 

Living in a country where corn (maize) is the staple food product you would think that we could easily refine this process but that has not been the case.Even the hammer mills that grind corn for very cheap could not grind wet corn. It has to be dried out. Then we tried an Indian (as in from India, Indian) friends’s grinder but it only made it mush. So we are still hand grinding. 

Thus the lengthy process to make corn chips. Some people here attempt to make chips out of the flour tortillas... it was that desperate of a situation! 

But, as part of growing the business we are getting a shipment of an electric grinder from the states, via Mexico, an industrial tortilla press and a fryer via Canada to help reduce the production time and increase the amount of chips flying out of our doors. It really is a global effort to bring chips here. :)  Sarah has turned over the production to our full-time employee Fungai and Ian now has a part-time job working alongside him. She has moved on to developing Salsa. She has gotten the recipe down now and we hope in the next few weeks to add that to our repertoire of goods sold.  

We excitedly introduce EL GRINGO Corn tortilla chips to ZAMBIA! 

Next time... from the Cakery, we discuss bagels and ice cream.