The Perfect Tortilla commercial runs almost endless on late night television targeting those who have a weakness for As-Seen-On-TV infomercials. It seems like something that is easy to use, eliminates the need to fry tortilla shells and can be used for salads, snacks, dips and even ice cream bowls.
When was the last time you sat there and said, “You know, I really need something to make taco bowls in”? Probably never. When I get a craving for a taco salad I hit Taco Bell or one of the local Mexican restaurants. I hoped that with the Perfect Tortilla I would be able to make salads a little more interesting, it didn’t work out that way.
The concept behind the Perfect Tortilla is to place a medium or large tortilla inside the non-stick cavity and bake until it hardens; this can be about five minutes for most ovens. Sounds super easy doesn’t it? The biggest problem is that getting the tortilla inside the pan is a problem, even more so if you are working with ones that have been refrigerated. You get rips and tears from trying to get the tortilla inside the pan; even if you double up the tortilla the shells will not stick together so that ice cream dessert you were planning is going to end up leaking everywhere.
The standard set contains two and a mini chopper as well as an idea booklet; it sells for ten dollars. If that were the case I wouldn’t be complaining but they strong-arm you in to the bonus set of two more pans with the tag of ‘just pay separate shipping and handling’ so the ten dollar purchase blossoms in to a $25.90 purchase plus sales tax if you live in one of the areas that they ship from. There is a money back guarantee but that is only on the price of the molds, not the shipping so if you return them you are only going to get a $10.00 refund and you are going to have to pay to ship them back.
In addition to the torn tortilla shells you have to heat up your own to bake the shells inside the molds. In the middle of winter that might not be bad but the last thing I want to do in the summer is to turn on the oven for something like a taco salad shell. You might end up half of a batch coming out usable; since there are four pans to the deal you are going to have to make at least two batches to get enough to make four taco salad bowls. You can make them in advance but they get dried out quickly and they are a pain to try and store. When I saw the Perfect Tortilla I immediately thought that the shells would be a great thing to make for tailgating for football, hockey and NASCAR parties. Now that I have tried them and seen the many faults of them I am going to stick with using plastic bowls or the actual Perfect Tortilla shell molds.
If you do not want to order them online you can get them at Target and Wal-Mart stores that sell As-Seen-On-TV products.
