Burrito is a popular Mexican dish consisting of a grilled or steamed tortilla wrapped into a cylindrical shape and filled with varied ingredients. Did you know that the word “burrito” means “little donkey” in Spanish? This could be because a burrito can carry many things just as a donkey can. Another theory is that the stuffed tortilla looks like the bundles often carried by the pack animal.
Another popular theory tells of an unnamed street vendor in Ciudad Juárez, who created the burrito in the 1940s, to sell to poor children at a nearby school. His affectionate nickname for the children was “burritos”, slang for “slow” or “dimwitted”, and that was how the food got its name.
There is one more theory, according to which the burrito was invented in Sonora (a region in northwest Mexico) as a food that was easy to carry around while traveling. Since traveling was commonly done by donkey, the burrito was named after the travel companion. Gustavo Arellano, who wrote the book “Taco: USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America” and is an expert on the topic, believes this theory is the most plausible, since Sonora is the region of Mexico known for growing wheat, which is the main ingredient in flour tortillas.
The original Mexican burritos (which are still consumed in Mexico today) are small and thin. They are filled with basic ingredients like meat, fish, cheese, beans, rice and hot peppers – but never all together, just one or two of these ingredients in a single burrito. Migrant workers from Mexico had possibly brought burritos with them to the United States between the 1940s and the 1960s. Americans quickly fell in love with the flavourful dish, and taquerias serving burritos started springing up in Southern California in the following decades.
The arrival of the burrito the States helped catalyze its transformation into the big, juicy super-burrito we know today. The Mission-style burrito, also known as the San Francisco burrito, was invented by El Faro, a grocery store in San Francisco’s Mission District, in 1961. El Faro’s owner, Febronio Ontiveros, claims to have come up with the extra-large burrito that contained rice, guacamole and sour cream alongside the standard fillings of meat, beans and cheese.
Of course, that’s not how the burrito story ends. Sixty years later, burritos in dizzying varieties are available in restaurants and grocery stores across the globe. Pretty incredible for a dish that started as a functional meal for travelers!
Credit : Quesada
Picture Credit : Google
