Comal, Molcajete, Tortilla Press: What's Worth Buying in the UK and What Isn't

Most equipment advice for Mexican cooking is written for a kitchen with a gas hob, a walk-in cupboard and a counter you could land a plane on. The average British kitchen has none of those. It has four square feet of worktop, an induction or ceramic hob, and a cupboard already losing a war with a slow cooker and a bread machine nobody has used since 2019.

So this is the kit list judged on those terms: what earns its space, what you can improvise, and what will sit in a cupboard looking authentic.

A comal, or the pan you already own

A comal is a flat griddle for toasting tortillas, chillies, tomatoes, garlic and spices. The traditional one is unglazed clay, the common modern one is thin carbon steel or cast iron, and the thing it does that a saucepan cannot is hold a wide, dry, even heat with nothing between the food and the metal.

Here is the part that saves most readers a purchase: a flat cast-iron frying pan or a cast-iron griddle plate does the job properly. If you own a cast-iron pan with a largely flat base, you own a comal. The real criterion is thermal mass and a dry surface, not the shape or the name.

If you are buying, buy for your hob. Carbon steel and cast iron both work on induction and are the sensible choice. A clay comal will not work on induction at all, cracks on a ceramic hob's thermal cycling, and really wants a gas flame. Ridged griddle pans are the wrong tool: a tortilla needs full contact, and ridges give you stripes and a cold tortilla between them.

Verdict: own one, but check your cupboard first. A flat cast-iron pan is the single most useful object in Mexican home cooking in Britain.

A molcajete, and how to tell a real one from a souvenir

A molcajete is a mortar carved from vesicular basalt: volcanic rock full of tiny holes. The holes are the technology. They grip, tear and grind, which is why a salsa made in one has a texture a blender cannot imitate, and why the same salsa tastes different rather than just looking different.

What is sold online as a molcajete is frequently not basalt. Polished grey granite, cast concrete and smooth marble all appear under the name. Three checks: a true basalt molcajete is visibly porous and matte, it is heavy enough to be awkward to lift one-handed, and it is never shiny. If the inside is smooth, you have bought a mortar that happens to be grey, and it will slide ingredients around rather than grinding them.

A new one must be cured, because it sheds grit. Grind a handful of uncooked rice to powder, discard, and repeat until the powder comes out white rather than grey; three to five rounds is typical. Then grind garlic and coarse salt once. After that, wash with water and a brush only, never detergent, and dry it properly.

Verdict: buy it if you make salsa often, and buy it from somewhere that says basalt. It is heavy, it takes cupboard space, and it does something no other tool in the kitchen does. Concrete-cast imitations are the one purchase in this article we would actively warn against.

A tortilla press, which is cheap and solves one problem completely

A tortilla press is two plates and a lever. It exists to apply even pressure fast, which hand-pressing between two plates does badly and a rolling pin does worse, because rolling stretches masa rather than compressing it and the tortilla shrinks back.

Cast iron against aluminium: cast iron is heavier, lasts forever and does not flex at the hinge, which is the part that eventually fails on cheap aluminium presses. Aluminium is lighter and fine for occasional use. Either way the hinge and the arm are what to look at, not the plates.

Size matters more than material. A six-and-a-half-inch press makes taco-sized tortillas; an eight-inch press makes the larger ones and also handles huaraches and tlacoyos. The larger press does everything the small one does.

The improvisation genuinely works, so try it before buying: two squares of cut-open freezer bag or baking parchment, a flat plate, and the base of a heavy frying pan pressed down with your body weight. This produces a real tortilla. It is slower, and after about twenty of them you will understand why the press exists.

Verdict: buy one, and buy the eight-inch. Of everything on this list it has the best ratio of usefulness to cupboard space.

A pressure cooker, which is the one that changes your week

Beans from dried take two to three hours in a pot and about forty minutes under pressure. Nixtamal takes a long simmer and a long rest, and a pressure cooker shortens the first half considerably. Birria, barbacoa, menudo and any stewed chilli adobo all collapse from an afternoon into an hour.

Stovetop against electric: a stovetop pressure cooker reaches a higher pressure and therefore cooks faster, and works on any hob including induction. An electric multicooker is lower pressure and slower, but it is unattended, which on a weekday is worth more than fifteen minutes. If you already own either, you are equipped.

One warning that matters for this cuisine. Never nixtamalise in an aluminium pan, pressure or otherwise, because the alkaline solution attacks aluminium. Stainless steel or enamelled only.

Verdict: the highest-impact purchase on this page if you do not already have one, and it earns its space on British cooking too.

A jug blender, and why the stick blender fails

Mexican cooking leans on the blender more than most people expect. Cooked salsas, moles, adobos, atoles, horchata and agua de jamaica all pass through one. A stick blender struggles with these because it needs the ingredients to come to it, and a pan of soaked dried chillies and toasted seeds does not flow; it sits there while the blade carves a hole in it.

A jug blender with a decent motor, a narrow base and a tamper or a lid you can scrape works. For a mole with nuts, seeds and dried fruit, motor power is the difference between a sauce and a gritty sauce, and this is the one place where a high-powered blender genuinely earns its price. For everything else, a mid-range jug blender is sufficient.

Verdict: own a jug blender. Do not buy a high-end one until a gritty mole has personally annoyed you.

A tamalera, and the pot you already have

A tamalera is a tall steamer with a perforated plate and a water reservoir, built to steam a vertical stack of tamales for an hour or more without boiling dry. It is a genuinely well-designed object and it is also enormous, which in a British kitchen is the whole argument against it.

The improvisation is standard practice in Mexican home kitchens too, so this is not a compromise. Take your largest stock pot. Put a metal steamer insert, an upturned heatproof bowl or a few scrunched balls of foil in the bottom to lift the tamales above the water line. Add water to just below that level, line the base with maize husks, stand the tamales upright leaning against each other, cover with more husks and a clean tea towel, and lid it. Check the water every half hour and top up with boiling water from the kettle.

Verdict: skip it unless you make tamales in volume several times a year. The stock pot method works and does not need a cupboard.

What we would not buy

• An electric tortilla maker. It presses and cooks in one go, which sounds ideal and in practice gives you a pressed, dried tortilla rather than a puffed one, because the two jobs want different timings.
• A dedicated tortilla warmer. A clean tea towel inside a lidded bowl does exactly the same thing and goes in the wash afterwards.
• A churrera. A piping bag with a star nozzle is the same tool without the storage problem.
• A taco shell mould rack. It solves a problem that only exists if you are deep-frying shells, which is a Tex-Mex format rather than a Mexican one.
• A clay cazuela, as a first purchase. Beautiful, and genuinely different for slow-cooked beans, but it does not work on induction, needs seasoning, and chips. Buy it later, as a pleasure rather than a tool.

The order we would buy in

Flat cast-iron pan. Jug blender. Eight-inch tortilla press. Pressure cooker. Basalt molcajete. Then, much later, the clay pieces. The first three will cost less than one high-end blender and will cover the overwhelming majority of what our recipe collection asks for. If you want to see what the fully equipped version looks like before committing, our kitchen tools section goes through the individual pieces.

Common questions

Will any of this work on an induction hob?

Cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel and enamelled steel all work. Clay, aluminium and non-magnetic stainless do not.

Can I use a pestle and mortar instead of a molcajete?

For spices, yes. For salsa, a small smooth mortar will puree rather than grind, which gives you a different texture.

Is a cast-iron press worth the extra over aluminium?

Only if you will use it weekly. The failure point on both is the hinge, and a well-made aluminium press outlasts a badly made iron one.