Burrito

A burrito (US: English: /bəˈritoʊ/, Spanish: [bu'ri.to]), or taco de harina, is a type of Mexican food. It consists of a wheat flour tortilla wrapped or folded around a filling. The flour tortilla is usually lightly grilled or steamed, to soften it and make it more pliable. In Mexico, refried beans or meat are sometimes the only fillings. In the United States, however, fillings generally include a combination of ingredients such as Mexican rice, beans, lettuce, salsa, meat, avocado, cheese, and sour cream, and the size varies, with some burritos considerably larger than their Mexican counterparts.

History

Antecedents

Hand-held take-out foods like the burrito have a long history. Before the Spanish colonization of the Americas, indigenous peoples were eating hand-held snack foods like corn on the cob, popcorn and pemmican. In Mexico, the Spanish observed Aztecs selling take-out foods like tamales, tortillas, and sauces in open marketplaces. The Pueblo people of the desert Southwest also made tortillas with beans and meat sauce fillings prepared much like the modern burrito we know today.^[1]

Cuisine preceding the development of the modern taco, burrito, and enchilada was created by the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Aztec peoples of Mexico, who used tortillas to wrap foods, with fillings of chile sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, squash, and avocados. Spanish missionaries like Bernardino de Sahagún wrote about Aztec cuisine, describing the variety of tortillas and their preparation, noting that the Aztecs not only used corn in their tortillas, but also squash and amaranth, and that some varieties used turkey, eggs, or honey as a flavoring.^[2]

Development in Mexico

The word "burrito" appears in the 1895 Diccionario de Mexicanismos, where it is identified as a regional term from Guanajuato and defined as "Tortilla arrollada, con carne u otra cosa dentro, que en Yucatán llaman coçito,y en Cuernavaca y en Mexico, taco" (A rolled tortilla with meat or other ingredients inside, called 'coçito' in Yucatan and 'taco' in the city of Cuernavaca and in Mexico CIty).^[3]

The word burrito means "little donkey" in Spanish, coming from burro, which means "donkey". The name burrito possibly derives from the appearance of a rolled up wheat tortilla, which vaguely resembles the ear of its namesake animal, or from bedrolls and packs that donkeys carried.^[4] Tradition tells the story of a man named Juan Mendez who used to sell tacos in a street stand, using a donkey as a transport for himself and the food, during the Mexican Revolution period (1910–1921) in the Bella Vista neighborhood in Ciudad Juárez. ^{[citation needed]} To keep the food warm, Mendez wrapped food in large home made flour tortillas inside individual napkins. He had a lot of success, and consumers came from other places around the Mexican border looking for the "food of the burrito" (i.e., "food of the little donkey"), the word they eventually adopted as the name for these large tacos.

Development in the United States

In 1923, Alejandro Borquez opened the Sonora cafe in Los Angeles, which later changed its name to the El Cholo Spanish Cafe.^[5] Burritos first appeared on American restaurant menus at the El Cholo Spanish Cafe during the 1930s.^[6] Burritos were mentioned in the U.S. media for the first time in 1934,^[7] appearing in the Mexican Cookbook, a collection of regional recipes from New Mexico authored by historian Erna Fergusson.^[8]

Regional varieties

Mexico

Burritos are a traditional food of Ciudad Juárez, a city in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, where people buy them at restaurants and roadside stands. Northern Mexican border towns like Villa Ahumada have an established reputation for serving burritos. Authentic Mexican burritos are usually small and thin, with flour tortillas containing only one or two ingredients: some form of meat or fish, potatoes, rice, beans, asadero cheese, chile rajas, or chile relleno.^[9] Other types of ingredients may include barbacoa, mole, chopped hot dogs cooked in a tomato and chile sauce, refried beans and cheese, deshebrada, and (shredded slow-cooked flank steak). The deshebrada burrito also has a variation with chile colorado (mild to moderately hot) and salsa verde (very hot). The Mexican burrito may be a northern variation of the traditional taco de Canasta, which is eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.^{[citation needed]}

Although burritos are one of the most popular examples of Mexican cuisine outside of Mexico, in Mexico they are only popular in the northern part of the country. However, they are beginning to appear in some nontraditional venues in other parts of Mexico.

Wheat flour tortillas used in burritos are now often seen throughout much of Mexico (possibly due to these areas being less than optimal for growing maize), despite at one time being peculiar to northwestern Mexico, the Southwestern US Mexican American community, and Pueblo Indian tribes.

Burritos are commonly called tacos de harina (wheat flour tacos) in central and southern Mexico and burritas (feminine variation, with 'a') in northern-style restaurants outside of northern Mexico proper. A long and thin fried burrito similar to a chimichanga is prepared in the state of Sonora and vicinity, and is called a chivichanga.^[10]

United States

The most common style of the burrito in the United States is not as common in Mexico. Typically, American style burritos are larger than Mexican ones, and stuffed with more ingredients than the principal meat or vegetable filling. Pinto or black beans, rice (with cilantro and lime or Mexican style), guacamole, salsas, cheese, and sour cream are frequently added.

San Diego

The San Diego style of burrito has been described as "austere" and "simple".^[11]^[12] A carne asada burrito in San Diego, for example, can consist solely of chunks of carne asada and guacamole,^[13] or carne asada, guacamole, and pico de gallo salsa,^[14] without other ingredients such as rice and beans. One may also encounter non-traditional, "healthy" burrito fillings such as eggplant.^[15]

The California burrito, a San Diego-area specialty,^[16] consists of chunks of carne asada meat, French fries, cheese, and either pico de gallo, sour cream, or guacamole (or some combination of these three).^[17]^[18] The ingredients are similar to those used in the carne asada fries dish, and it is considered a staple of the local cuisine of San Diego, California.^[19] With its merging of French fries with more traditional burrito fillings, the California burrito is an example of fusion border food.^[15] Although the California burrito originated in San Diego sometime in the 1980s, the first documentation of a burrito in its style can be found in a 1995 article in the Albuquerque Tribune.^[20]

San Francisco

Also called a Mission or Mission-style burrito, the typical San Francisco burrito is produced on a steam table assembly line, and is characterized by a large stuffed tortilla, wrapped in aluminum foil, which can include variations on different ingredients. The origins of the San Francisco burrito can be traced back to Mission District taquerias of the 1960s. Other theories state the original San Francisco burritos began with farmworkers in the fields of the Central Valley,^[21] or with miners of the 19th century.^[4] In 1961, Febronio Ontiveros began offering the first retail burrito in San Francisco at El Faro (The Lighthouse), a corner grocery store on Folsom Street. Ontiveros is credited with inventing the "super burrito" style leading to the early development of the "San Francisco style". This innovation involved adding rice, sour cream and guacamole to the standard meat, bean and cheese burrito. El Faro got its start when firemen from a nearby station requested sandwiches, which Ontiveros was unable to make. Instead, Ontiveros offered the firemen burritos. Large tortillas were unavailable in the early 1960s, so three six-inch tortillas were used to hold the filling. Ontiveros sold the burritos for one US dollar.^[21]^[22]

The San Francisco burrito emerged as a regional culinary movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The popularity of San Francisco-style burritos has grown locally, with Mission Street taquerias like El Farolito, and nationally with chains such as Moe's Southwest Grill, Chipotle Mexican Grill,^[23] Illegal Pete's, Freebirds World Burrito, Qdoba, and Barberitos. In 1995, World Wrapps opened in San Francisco's Marina District, bringing a burrito-inspired sandwich wrap style to the restaurant industry.^[24]

Others

Breakfast burrito

The breakfast burrito, a variety of American breakfast, is composed of breakfast items wrapped inside a flour tortilla. This style was invented and popularized in several different regional American cuisines, most notably New Mexican cuisine, Southwestern cuisine, and Tex-Mex. Southwestern breakfast burritos may include scrambled eggs, potatoes, onions, chorizo, guisado, or bacon.^[25] Tia Sophia's, a Mexican café in Santa Fe, New Mexico, claims to have invented the original breakfast burrito in 1975, filling a rolled tortilla with bacon and potatoes, served wet with chili and cheese.^[26] Fast food giant McDonald's introduced their version in the late 1980s, and by the 1990s, more fast food restaurants caught on to the style, with Taco Bell, Sonic, and Carl's Jr. offering breakfast burritos on their menus.

Wet burrito

A wet (or enchilada style) burrito is smothered in a red chili sauce similar to enchilada sauce with melted shredded cheese on top. It is typically eaten off a plate with a fork and knife, rather than hand held.^[27] When served in a Mexican restaurant in the U.S., a melted cheese covered burrito is typically called a burrito suizo (suizo meaning Swiss, an adjective used in Spanish to indicate dishes topped with cheese or cream).

Related foods

A burrito bowl is a burrito or fajita served without the tortilla, with the fillings placed in a bowl, with a layer of rice at the bottom. It is not to be confused with a taco salad, which has a foundation of lettuce inside a fried tortilla. The burrito bowl is found in some form at many national Mexican food chain restaurants.

A chimichanga is a deep-fried burrito popular in Southwestern and Tex-Mex cuisines, and in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora.^[28]

Research

Taco Bell research chef Anne Albertine experimented with grilling burritos to enhance portability. This grilling technique allowed large burritos to remain sealed without spilling their contents.^[29] This is a well known cooking technique used by some San Francisco taquerias and Northern Mexico burrito stands. Traditionally, grilled burritos are cooked on a comal (griddle).

Bean burritos, which are high in protein and low in saturated fat have been touted for their health benefits. Black bean burritos are also a good source of dietary fiber and phytochemicals.^[30]

References

^ Keoke, Emory Dean (2001). "Snack foods, American Indian". Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations. New York: Facts On File, Inc. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^ Keoke, Emory Dean (2001). "Tortillas, American Indians and". Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations. New York: Facts On File, Inc. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^ Ramos y Duarte, Féliz (1895). Diccionario de Mejicanismos. Imprenta de Eduardo Dublan.
^ ^a ^b Duggan, Tara. (Apr. 29, 2001). The Silver Torpedo. San Francisco Chronicle. Cite error: The named reference "Duggan" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Shindler, Merrill (2001). "Comfort Food". Los Angeles Business Journal. Archived from the original on 2007-10-11. {{cite journal}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 2005-05-20 suggested (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Smith, Andrew F. (2004). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 171. ISBN 0195154371.
^ Smith, Andrew F. (1999). "Tacos, Enchiladas and Refried Beans: The Invention of Mexican-American Cookery". Cultural and Historical Aspects of Foods. Corvallis: Oregon State University. pp. 183–203. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
^ Smith, Andrew F. (2007). The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 0195307968.
^ Franz, Carl (2006). The People's Guide to Mexico. Avalon Travel Publishing. p. 379. ISBN 1566917115. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^ Bayless, Rick and Deann Groen Bayless. (1987). Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico. Morrow Cookbooks. p. 142.ISBN 0-688-04394-1
^ Mark Ellwood, Nick Edwards. (2009). The Rough Guide to San Francisco & the Bay Area Penguin. p. 196.
^ Newberry, Jan. "The hunt for the best burrito". Sunset Magazine. Retrieved 2010-11-24. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
^ Leonard, James. University of San Diego Off the Record. p. 12.
^ Weisbrod, Justin (2008-03-18). "Burritology 101: What lies beneath the tortilla". The Daily Aztec. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
^ ^a ^b Ryan, Richard (Winter 2003). "Is it border cuisine, or merely a case of NAFTA indigestion?". Journal for the Study of Food and Society. 6 (2): 21–30.
^ Arellano, Gustavo (2010-06-17). "The California Challenge at Pepe's". OC Weekly. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
^ Lee, Mike (2009-07-13). "Burritos aren't safe on their plate". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
^ Hiss, Mark. Frommer's San Diego 2011. p. 13.
^ See for example: Berkmoes, Ryan (2009). "California Iconic Trips: A Burrito Odyssey". California Trips. Lonely Planet. ISBN 1741797276. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^ Gustavo Arellano (13 May 2011). "When Did the California Burrito Become the California Burrito?". OC Weekly. Retrieved 22 June 2011.
^ ^a ^b Roemer, John (1993-05-05). "Cylindrical God". SF Weekly.
^ Addison, Bill (September 13, 2006). "In search of the transcendent taqueria / Our critic puts 85 beloved Bay Area burrito joints to the test". San Francisco Chronicle. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
^ Slodysko, Brian (2008-06-25). "Chipotle serves up free burritos and drinks". Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. Retrieved 2008-06-28.^{[dead link]}
^ Hanson, Gayle M.B. (1996-12-02). "It's a Wrap! California offers America the next food craze". Insight on the News. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
^ Cheek, Lawrence. (Oct, 2001). Rise and shine - breakfast - Recipe. Sunset.
^ Anderson, Judith (1998-05-24). "What's Doing In; Santa Fe". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-08-18.
^ Palmatier, Robert Allen. (2000) Food: a dictionary of literal and nonliteral terms Greenwood Press. p. 372.
^ Sen, Amit. (2005). Academic Dictionary of Cooking Isha Books. p. 84.
^ Crosby, Olivia. (Fall, 2002). You're a What? Research Chef. Occupational Outlook Quarterly. Vol. 46, Num. 3.
^ The University of Pennsylvania Health System. Breakfast, Dinner or Anytime Burrito. Adapted from the Cancer Nutrition Information, LLC. Archive URL: Mar 25, 2006.