Tetelas filled with mezcal-sautéed mushrooms and quesillo (Oaxaca cheese) and served with crema, salsa roja and sliced avocado
By Leslie Brenner
[Editor’s note: This is second in a series of Cooks Without Borders stories (with recipes) about how to live the masa life. Read The Masa Life Part 1.. This article was updated April 20, 2024.]
The first time I ever tasted a tetela, weirdly enough, was at my own kitchen counter. It was last spring, when Olivia Lopez, who hadn’t yet founded her popular Dallas business Molino Olōyō, shared a recipe for us to publish here at Cooks Without Borders.
It was a wonderful dish, and beautiful to boot. The tetelas, made from Masienda masa harina, were filled with refried beans and spooned over with a gorgeous sauté of spring vegetables.
Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables and Requeson
I wanted to run the recipe right away, but there was so much explaining to do first. Because they’re filled with Olivia’s vegan, refried bayo beans, we’d first need to talk about bayo beans, and how to think about Mexican beans in a whole new way. We’d need to explain the whys and wherefores of making masa at home that’s far better than what you make using Maseca. And we’d need to show how to make some basic things you should probably make with masa before you attempt tetelas.
Six months later, that’s out of the way. So, let’s talk tetelas!
What exactly is a tetela, anyway?
A traditional snack from Oaxaca, a tetela is triangular masa casing filled with one or two ingredients (often refried beans and/or the stringy, meltable Oaxacan cheese known as quesillo). It can be eaten plain, slit open from the top and dressed with salsa and crema, or dressed up even more than that, as with Olivia’s spring veg creation.
Making tetelas has much in common with making quesadillas — the traditional corn-tortilla kind of quesadilla you find in Oaxaca, not the store-bought flour-tortilla kind most common stateside. To make a tetela, you press masa into a tortilla disc, but before it’s cooked, you add the filling or fillings, fold the tortilla around them into sealed triangular packet, and then cook the packet on both sides on a comal or skillet. “The ingenious wrapping of the masa makes this a perfect vessel to keep ingredients hot and it has the advantage of being a great to-go snack,”wrote Enrique Olvera and company in their cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa. Think of it as a three-sided, sealed quesadilla.
Why are tetelas about to become trendy?
Heirloom-corn-focused molino-cafés and similar businesses are suddenly popping up all over the U.S., and tetelas are one of the masa shapes the chefs and entrepreneurs behind them often feature. Check out the pretty tetelas— bi-colored and imprinted with epazote leaves — in the lead photo for a Bon Appétit story recently published by yours truly on the subject.
Tetelas are a simple pleasure I turn to again and again when I find myself in possession of a juicy pot of beans, or a chewy hank of quesillo. And because I’m usually harboring at least one or two salsas in the fridge, it’s an easy way to make something delicious, special and nearly always meat-free come together without too much effort. It may look complicated, but do it once or twice, and it’s a breeze. You only need two or three tetelas per person, so it’s not like making a million dumplings. If you make and cook the tetelas ahead of time, you can keep them in the fridge and reheat them later on the comal.
Folding a tetela
You can also think of the meal-planning kind of backward: If you have a jar of Salsa Macha, say, whether purchased or home-made, a tetela would be the ideal vehicle for it. It’s like of like building an outfit around a scarf or belt, and it works. You can even cheat and keep cans of refried beans on hand (I like the organic pinto refried beans from Whole Foods). If you also keep quesillo (or any other kind of meltable cheese) in your fridge, and of course masa harina in the pantry, you are in business.
How do I get started?
So glad you asked!
• Get yourself a bag of superior masa harina. (We test all our masa-focused recipes using Masienda heirloom corn masa harina, which is available a many Whole Foods Markets, through its own website, and at Amazon. King Arthur sells organic masa harina, but its ground finer than Masienda’s, and it may not have the structure for tetelas (it’s nice for soft tortillas).
• If you want to include beans, put yourself in a refried-bean situation — any way you like. You can simmer up a pot of mayocobas or bayos and make a quick vegan version. You could buy a side-order from your favorite Mexican restaurant — you don’t need a whole lot to fill each tetela, just about a tablespoon. Or even buy a can.
• Buy some quesillo, if you want to include cheese. (Both of our recipes do, though you could certainly leave it out. For vegan versions, you can follow our two recipes and just use a little more refried beans or mushroom filling.)
• You will need a tortilla press. If you’re just starting out, you can get an inexpensive aluminum or cast-iron press. Many chefs love the Doña Rosa Tortilla Press sold through Masienda; it’s the one we use in our test kitchen.
• Make or procure some nice salsa or salsas. I recommend keeping Olivia’s Salsa Macha in the fridge. Or dice up some Pico de Gallo à la minute (it’s best eaten fresh). You might make in advance a Roasted Salsa Verde or Salsa Roja, or have a jar of store-bought on hand.
By now you’re probably clamoring for the recipe for Olivia’s gorgeous tetela dish. Alas, I’m going to ask you to wait. Ironically, now that I’ve laid down all that groundwork, spring vegetables are six months behind us. Of course that means they’re also six months ahead of us, so you can look forward to Olivia’s recipe once we have spring in our sights.
In the meantime, I’ve fallen in love with the basic tetelas, as they’re often enjoyed in Mexico: as simple snacks, served with salsa and maybe crema. Our recipes follow. Enjoy the folding and eating!
Blue corn tetelas filled with quesillo and refried beans and topped with crema, roasted salsa verde and salsa macha