The Best Way To Make Tortilla Chips Right At Home

If you want some tortilla chips for your taco night, tailgate party, bar mitzvah, or what have you, you'll find no shortage of options at the grocery store. In fact, we ranked grocery store tortilla chips from worst to best ourselves. But what if you want a little more control over your chips? What if you want to choose how much salt you want on your chips, and what if you'd rather bake them instead of fry them? Luckily for you, the key to making tortilla chips at home is right there in the name — all you need are tortillas. We talked to Chloe Hammond, head chef at Asana Lodge, and she told us everything we needed to know.

First off, while most tortilla chips you'll buy at the supermarket are fried, Hammond recommends baking yours in the oven. "It's simple, consistent, and you can do a big batch at once," she says. All you need to do is cut them into the right shapes, apply a bit of salt and oil, and bake until they're the right level of crispiness. "They come out light, crunchy, and much less greasy than fried ones," explains Hammond . In any case, it's a lot less nerve-wracking to bake something than it is to fry it — but if you decide to make use of your fryer, just be sure to avoid the most dangerous deep fryer disaster (failing to pat-dry your food before frying).

So what kind of tortillas should you use for these chips? When we asked Chloe Hammond, she recommends corn tortillas for a few different reasons. "They crisp up beautifully, hold their structure, and give you that proper tortilla chip flavor," she says. While flour tortillas aren't the worst choice, you should be wary of what baking will do to their texture. "Flour tortillas tend to puff and go more crackery like, which isn't unpleasant, but it's not quite the same," notes Hammond.

Once you've got them baked and ready, what do you do with them? Well, when you're done eating, you'll want to store them someplace airtight. "Once cool, keep them in an airtight container at room temperature," says Hammond. "They'll last about 4 or 5 days before they start to go a bit stale." That might not sound like a lot of time to enjoy nachos, but that's the trade-off when you make something at home. They won't have the longevity of a shelf-stable product like Tostitos (whose bland Restaurant Style chips rank as our least favorite tortilla chips), but they'll be tastier,  and a little bit healthier, too. Plus, if they don't come out quite how you wanted them to, you can always use them as a chili thickener.