The history of…drumroll please…burritos! Did you know that food historians can’t agree on its exact birthplace?
The idea of a burrito is deeply Mexican and based on the traditional taco. Tacos are a longtime staple all over Mexico, and different groups enjoyed them in different ways. The Aztecs, for example, wrapped everything from chile sauce to tomatoes, turkey, eggs, honey, mushrooms, squash and avocados. Their tortillas were made of corn, or of squash and amaranth grain.
The one thing that their tortillas were not made of was wheat flour. Wheat isn’t a traditional crop in Mexico. But a burrito isn’t, technically speaking, a burrito without a wheat-flour tortilla (the wheat-flour wrapping is what differentiates a burrito from a taco). So if the wheat tortilla isn’t part of traditional Mexican cuisine, what, then, is the burrito?
Photo by Erik Jacobs for The Daily
