Updated: Monday, March 29, 2021, 7 PM

We bake more than we fry in our kitchen. So, when we first tried making homemade tortilla chips, we baked them. They were delicious, but we decided to try frying them. They were even better!

There’s not much in the way of a recipe you’ll need to fry your own homemade tortilla chips. Just have your favorite cooking oil (we use canola most often), a pack of corn tortillas (unless you want to try making your own from masa, and be sure to cook them first) and some salt.

Stack your tortillas on top of each other on a cutting board. With a sharp knife, slice them all in half, then slice those in half, then slice all parts in half one more time. The result is eight pieces of tortilla from each of your original tortillas.

Get your cooking oil nice and hot, then drop in your tortilla pieces. It’s best to have a drain bin (we use a paper towel in a collander in a mixing bowl, so you can drain and cool the chips when they’re done. You’ll know they’re done when all the chips are nice and brown in the oil.

Toss the chips in salt and incorporate them into your favorite dips and dishes. That’s all there is to it!

BAKED CHIPS OPTION!

When we go to a Mexican restaurant, we love the tortilla chips that almost certainly come out to the table as what amounts to a free appetizer before any meal.

Most tortilla chips you buy in bags at the grocery store just don’t stack up to those in the restaurants. (And neither does the salsa in jars!)

Enter these simple homemade tortilla chips that we bake in the oven!

Sure, you can fry your chips for a different crisp, but we’ve grown fond of baking many of our foods instead of frying them, both for nutritional value and consistency.

Other than a few kitchen staples, the only ingredient you need for these chips is corn tortillas, which are usually incredibly cheap! We often buy such tortillas at our favorite grocery store, Aldi, but we’ve also become fond of picking up our corn tortillas at the Wow Supermarket in our community.

These chips have a huge crunch, especially if you let them cool a bit after they come out of the oven, and they go great with our homemade salsa, guacamole (and we love simply mixing 1 sliced and smashed avocado, juice of 1/2 a lime and 1/8 of a teaspoon of salt for a quick and simple guac), or any other dip you love!

Baked Corn Tortilla Chips

What You Need

6 corn tortillas

Olive oil spray

Salt to taste

What You Do

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

2. Stack your tortillas evenly atop each other. Cut across to separate in half. Rotate 90 degrees then cut across to separate into four equal sections. (You can cut your tortillas into smaller pieces, but this is a good size for cooking.)

3. Cover a baking sheet/pan with foil. Spray the sheet evenly with an olive oil spray. (You can use regular olive oil in a bottle and then brush it around, but the spray is much easier for this application.)

4. Arrange your tortilla pieces so that none are covering each other.

5. Lightly spray the tops of all the tortillas. Sprinkle salt across all the tops of the pieces. The spray will also help the salt stick better.

6. Bake the chips for 12-15 minutes. (Your time will vary depending on your oven. We’ve found that 12 minutes is good.) Then cool for at least 5 minutes to help the chip pieces crisp. Serve with desired accompaniment. We LOVE this recipe for our easy homemade salsa!

Yield: 24 chips, unless you cut them differently…Need more chips? Add more tortillas to the stack you cut. Each additional tortilla will yield at least 4 more chips.

#FoodieScore Pro Tip: Most corn tortillas are 40 to 50 calories each, so you can use that count to approximate your calories for your chips, adjusting slightly to account for the oil you use. Of course, you’ll add calories depending on the dip, too.