Healthy Wraps at Home (Make Your Own Flatbread)

When I'm at the office, I could eat a wrap every day. It seems you can get your protein, your carbs, and fat all in one well-wrapped parcel. It could potentially be the perfect food. I mean, it's more substantial than a salad and slightly less bready than a sandwich. So that's what I'm gonna show you how to do today. So you can go as hefty as a burrito or as light as a salad that then is just wrapped. So usually you'll need some proteins, some roasted or grilled vegetables, some salad leaves, and a couple of sauces to help bind everything together. Now, for the wrap itself, you can do something as traditional as a Mexican tortilla, slightly larger, obviously, or you could do a very simple regular wheat flatbread, which I'm gonna show you how to make from scratch today. But again, do not let that stop you. You can find pre-made ones in the supermarket, no problem. They don't taste exactly the same, but you'll be able to find more variety. Like you can find regular wheat ones to rye and barley wraps. There's absolutely everything out there. I'm also gonna show you just different stuffings that I really enjoy to eat. Okay, let's get cooking. In a large bowl, mix together four cups of all-purpose flour, one and 1 1⁄2 teaspoons of salt, and 1⁄4 cup of extra virgin olive oil. You can also use lard or butter. 1 2⁄3 cups of hot water. And by hot, I mean close to boiling. Basically, anything you'll be able to handle while kneading it. Use a fork or a whisk to bring everything together until you can do it by hand. Once the dough is starting to come together, transfer it to your counter and knead and stretch it for about 10 minutes. If it's too liquid, add one tablespoon of flour at a time. Too dry, add one tablespoon of hot water at a time. It should feel like stretchy Play-Doh. When done, wrap this in a kitchen towel and rest for 30 minutes. Shape a ball and flatten it into a disc about the size of your palm and then start rolling it out as circular as you can get it. I'm not really good at making round things, so just do the best you can. Make sure when you roll it, you pass over the sides. Everything should be the same thickness. I like to get it thin enough that you can start seeing the shadows or kind of see through to the other side. I try to make it at least 10 inches long for a proper wrap. As you roll these out, make sure you cover them so that the dough doesn't dry out. Get a nonstick pan out on medium heat, wait for it to get hot, and place your dough on it. Wait one minute, flip, and then cook for a further one minute. This comes down to feel. If you want to get some nice dark spots developed, go for it. If you want to keep it nice and white, just make sure you keep an eye on it as well. You can also rotate it in the pan to ensure that you don't burn it or get any hot spots. Remember, you're not trying to get this crispy or create any large bubbles like a Mexican tortilla. You just want it cooked and stretchy. Once done, and this is a really important step, make sure to cover it right away with a towel or place this in a large plastic container or a tortilla warmer if you have one. We need the heat of the wrap to create steam to make sure it stays soft. If you skip this altogether, you won't be able to fold and roll this wrap. After about five to 10 minutes in the kitchen towel, they should be nice and pliable, just like this. Now time for the fun part. I won't give you a step-by-step on how to create all the elements for these wraps as they're quite simple, but here are a couple of ideas. Let's start with my favorite, a steak and eggs wrap. All you need to do is cook your favorite tenderloin steak to medium rare. Make sure to let it rest so that your wrap doesn't get all runny with all the juices, and then slice it. For the eggs, I just like to make a very simple scramble with some olive oil, some salt, and get it to the doneness that you enjoy. Open up your wrap, add some mayonnaise. This will act as a binder. Place your eggs and steak inside. Cover with some grated cheddar cheese. Fold the sides almost straight, pinch the bottom, roll, tuck, and close. Since there's some cheese in there, I like to heat this up in the pan for about one minute per side. You're all done, time to slice. Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Wanna see the roll again? Okay, there are so many different techniques, but this is the way I like to do it. So the idea is you only fill the first half of the wrap and leave a little bit of margin to the side. Then V-shape the two bottom sides, flip the bottom lip, do the first roll onto itself, tuck the sides, make sure everything is in, roll again, and tuck again, and roll once more. All throughout this process, you're making sure to tighten it as you go so you get one compact unit. Okay, now that that's clear, here are some other fun fillings. One of my go-to ones is made of pesto, a little bit of tzatziki, mashed avocados, turkey ham, some salad greens, and a little bit of salt, and you're good to go. You can wrap this in parchment paper for later if you wanna take this to work. For a quick vegan one, you can make these oyster mushroom chips. They're so good. Brush a sheet tray with olive oil, add in your oyster mushrooms, salt, and a little bit more oil. Toss, lay flat, make sure to socially distance them so they get crunchy. This goes into the oven at 200 centigrade for about 10 to 15 minutes until nice and crispy. If they stick to the pan, don't worry. Kind of just pull it off. These get so crispy that they'll remind you of like a pork rind. We're gonna start off with our binders, so some hummus, and then we're gonna add our mushrooms, some tahini, and our salad leaves. Simple. For our chicken version, cook some tenderloin in a pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Couldn't get easier than that. Once cooked, take them out, let them rest a little bit. On our wrap, start with some tzatziki, add your shredded chicken, sliced tomatoes, and some scallions. This could be one of the most perfect foods. If you guys have been watching me for a while now, and you're asking why I'm always in a hat, it's because I'm working with this situation. We're still in lockdown in Melbourne, so we've been in lockdown for, I don't even know how many days, probably half a year already, and all the barber shops are closed. So yeah, this is what you have to deal with. I'm gonna go ahead and put this on a plate. Why I love making these homemade, very first thing, is when I look at the ingredients here in this pack, I have wheat flour, water, vegetable fat, wholemeal wheat flour, sumac, tin, 4-2-2, fermented wheat flour, vegetable emulsifiers, raisins, raisins, raisins, almond flour, prunes, raisins, raisins, vitamins. I mean, if you really look at these ingredients, none of them are, they sound scary, like most of the time in ingredient lists. None of them are inherently bad, but I just feel like there's so many ingredients in a really simple wrapper. Whereas the one I showed you has flour, salt, water, and oil, four ingredients, and it takes 30 minutes. Huge other difference, obviously, if you look at it here, color-wise, shape-wise, these are perfect circles. They probably have some sort of presses. Size-wise, as you can tell, it's more or less the same. But the massive difference is in the flavor. If I taste the perfect one, it tastes stale. It's not bad. I mean, I would eat that in a pinch, but it tastes stale. Versus if you eat this, especially if it's still warm and it's still kind of very soft and pliable like it is here. Flavor-wise, you can't beat it. And for me, that char is so important. You need some of that char to bring you flavor. This could be one of the most perfect foods simply because it's convenient, it's fast to make. Even if you make it from scratch, it's pretty quick. And you can stuff this with everything that you want. So imagine this is your carbs. You don't have to do it with wheat, white, regular, all-purpose flour. You can also use wholemeal or rye. And experiment with the different ratios to make sure you get it right. So you could make this from more complex sources of carbohydrates, and then you stuff this with all the vegetables that you want, roasted vegetables, stir-fried proteins. Very simple, and it's just like a nice, compact lunch. So I'm gonna try, I'm gonna try the last one so I don't disturb the pyramid. So this one is chicken tzatziki, scallions, tomatoes, and a little bit of tahini. Juicy, tender, and for me, what's really key is that wrapper has to be kind of elastic and still chewy. It can't be flaky. If it's flaky, it'll break. And as you can tell here, none of these broke, which is really good. None of the ingredients I used today are set in stone. It really just was what I had in my fridge, and you just put it together very simply. So if you guys try out this recipe at home, please make sure to tag me with whatever creative ingredients you put in there on my social media pages. All the information is down below. Thanks for watching. Peace out. Good? Yummy.