Category: Recipe

An actual burrito–the Spanish word means 'little donkey'.

A huge California-style burrito in a to-go container.  This burrito is 'wet'–served slathered with sauce and dripping with shredded yellow cheese.  You can also order yours 'dry'–just the burrito, usually served wrapped in either aluminum foil or paper.

For those of you who live in most parts of the United States, the burrito is a fast-food fact of life.  Southern California in particular has its Mexican drive-through joints where the burrito is king.  You can order a burrito stuffed with anything from ground beef to shrimp; some burritos are advertised as being as big as your head.  Most are dubiously the equivalent of an entire meal, often eaten from your dripping hands as you whiz along a freeway.  One burrito that has come to enjoy raging popularity is stuffed with all the usual items (a meat, rice, beans, plus guacamole) and adds french fries!

Here in Mexico, the burrito is a little more elusive. Not a native of the central or southern part of Mexico, it's been imported from the northern regions of Mexico to fill a niche in some local menus.

The Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines burrito as a Mexican cooking term: a tortilla folded over a filling of ground meat, cheese, or refried beans. [1940-45; derived from Mexican Spanish: stuffed taco, Spanish: young donkey, foal, equivalent to burro or its diminutive, burr + ito]

In his book Chicano Folklore, Rafael Castro says that the burrito (the food) probably originated in Northern Mexico and was not known in other regions of Mexico.  Chicanos in Texas have been making them since the 1920's. The origin and first use of the word burrito for a special type of taco is muddy, however. One story has it that the 'new' flour tortilla and bean tacos were better suited than the crisper, more fragile corn tortilla to withstand travel in the saddle bags of the vaqueros (cowboys). Castro says they came to be called burritos because young donkeys were often the "sidekick" of the vaquero's horse. Another story says that "burrito" comes from small children asking for a treat while their mother was making tortillas. She would form the masa (dough) into a small tortilla, heat it on a comal, smear it with beans, roll it up, and send each child away with one, satisfying them until it was time to eat. Another tale thinks the term came from a 1940's restaurant in Ciudad Juárez (just across the Mexican border from El Paso, Texas) called Los Burritos that sold these new flour tortilla creations.

Yet another theory says that the word burrito originated among migrant workers in California's Imperial Valley. The fields were often too far from the lodgings provided for the workers for them to return home for lunch, so their rice and beans were cooked up in the morning, portions were wrapped in a large flour tortilla to carry them out to the fields. Thus the tortilla more specifically was the "little burro" used to carry the lunch, but the term burrito was understood to mean the whole package.

Fonda Los Burritos de Moyahua 

Out in the wilds of the state of Zacatecas, there is a little town called Moyahua (moy-AH-wah), where the burrito has reigned supreme since 1976, when the restaurant Fonda Los Burritos de Moyahua opened. Now world-renowned, the restaurant opened its branch on the Chapala-Guadalajara highway (about half way between Chapala and the Guadalajara airport) in 1989.

For 26 years, Jalisco's Los Burritos de Moyahua has served burritos to hungry truckers, to bus loads of travelers, to ravenous families, to workers taking a break—to anyone who turns in off the highway, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. On Sunday afternoons the line of folks waiting to be fed often stretches down the entry stairs and all the way out to the parking lot.

My friend Susan and I drove the 40 minutes from Guadalajara to Los Burritos for lunch a few years ago. The restaurant is essentially a cafeteria; we each grabbed a tray and started down the line. The choices were plentiful: the menu includes chiles rellenos, chicken, and a few other standard dishes as well as the famous burritos, which is what we were craving.

Typical table at Fonda Los Burritos de Moyahua.  Note the variety of dishes, but pay special attention to the small burritos at the top right of the photo. Click on any photo for a larger view.  Photo courtesy Fonda Los Burritos.

Every burrito is made in the same way: a freshly made flour tortilla about eight inches in diameter is smeared with a spoonful of frijoles refritos and filled with a good amount of your choice of eight to ten different guisados (stews). The day we were there, the guisados included cochinita pibil (pork cooked Yucatan style), tinga poblana (Puebla-style stew), carne de res a la mexicana (Mexican style beef, with tomatoes, onions, and chile), chicharrones con salsa verde (crispy fried pigskins with spicy green sauce), carne deshebrada (shredded beef cooked with tomatoes and spices), elote con rajas de chile (corn with green chile strips), and others, including my personal favorite, chilorio (cooked and shredded pork and diced potatoes, seasoned with chile and a variety of spices).

Interior at Fonda los Burritos de Moyahua.  The hand made signs above the tables are a tradition of the restaurant, changing with the passing seasons. Photo courtesy Fonda los Burritos.

In addition to the burritos, you'll be tempted by chunks of cheese (queso fresco or panela) to add to your plate and desserts such as arroz con leche (Mexican rice pudding), flan (Mexican caramel custard), and jericailla (plain Mexican custard). Grab a soft drink or a beer, pay at the end of the cafeteria line, and head for a table. Place an order for quesadillas (and do order at least one; they're the best) and you'll be given a number to place on your tray; after you're seated a waitress will bring the quesadillas to you at your table.

Expect to pay very little for your meal. Susan and I ordered two chilorio burritos, one burrito of cochinita pibil, two quesadillas, a chile relleno, two chunks of queso fresco, and two soft drinks. The total bill for the two of us was under 80 pesos (Less than $8 USD).  It's been a few years, so the price has undoubtedly increased. 

  
Susan, chowing down on her first burrito.

La Fonda Los Burritos has three large dining rooms, two huge indoor rooms and another outdoors under a roof for shade. You'll find wonderful fresh salsas and pickled chiles jalapeños available on a table in each dining room. In addition, there are posters in hand-lettered Spanish hanging from the ceilings of all three areas. The posters are changed from time to time; when Susan and I were there, love poems by the romantic Spaniard, poet Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870), were hung in honor of February, the month of love.

La Fonda Los Burritos de Moyahua is located on the west side of the Chapala-Guadalajara highway just past the exit for La Barca (as you're driving north), almost directly opposite the incredibly pink Motel Eddie's.

Breakfast burrito to make at home.  Photo courtesy Jeff Miller.

Burritos in the Home Kitchen
It's simple and delicious to make burritos at home-and they're suitable for any meal from breakfast to a midnight snack. I talked to a favorite chef, who gave me this recipe for:

Mexican Style Breakfast Burritos
(Serves 4)

4 flour tortillas, 7-8 inches in diameter
4 thick slices of bacon
1/2 white onion, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 pound new potatoes, boiled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and fresh ground pepper
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup chopped canned green chiles
1/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 ripe avocado, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice

Wrap the tortillas in foil and warm in a 250 degree oven.

Fry the bacon and remove from the skillet when crispy. Drain on absorbent paper and crumble. Add the onion to the skillet and sauté until softened. Stir in the potatoes and sprinkle with cumin, salt, and pepper to taste. Fry until the potatoes are well-browned; you may need to scrape the bottom of the skillet with a spatula so that the potatoes don't stick. Lower the heat and stir in the eggs and green chiles. Scramble with a fork until the eggs are completely set but still moist. Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the cheese and the crumbled bacon.

Spoon 1/4 of the mixture across the middle of each warmed tortilla; be sure to leave room to fold the tortilla. Sprinkle on some diced avocado. Fold two sides of the tortilla over the filling, slightly overlapping. Fold up the bottom to cover more of the filling and roll into a cylinder.

Buen provecho!

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Tortitas de papa (potato croquettes, left) and frijoles negros (black beans, right) from the south of Mexico are ideal for a Lenten meal.

Catholic Mexicans observe la Cuaresma (Lent), the 40-day (excluding Sundays) penitential season that precedes Easter, with special prayers, vigils, and with extraordinary meatless meals cooked only on Ash Wednesday and during Lent.  Many Mexican dishes–seafood, vegetable, and egg–are normally prepared without meat, but some other meatless dishes are particular to Lent. Known as comida cuaresmeña, many of these delicious Lenten foods are little-known outside Mexico and some other parts of Latin America.

Many observant Catholics believe that the personal reflection and meditation demanded by Lenten practices are more fruitful if the individual refrains from heavy food indulgence and makes a promise to abstain from other common habits such as eating candy, smoking cigarettes, and drinking alcohol.  

Atole de grano, a Michoacán specialty made of tender corn and licorice-scented anís, is a perfect cena (supper) for Lenten Fridays.

Lent began this year on Ash Wednesday, February 18.  Shortly before, certain food specialties began to appear in local markets.Vendors are currently offering very large dried shrimp for caldos (broths) and tortitas (croquettes), perfect heads of cauliflower for tortitas de coliflor (cauliflower croquettes), seasonal romeritos, and thick, dried slices of bolillo (small loaves of white bread) for capirotada (a kind of bread pudding). 

This common Lenten preparation is romeritos en mole.  Romeritos, an acidic green vegetable, is in season at this time of year.  Although it looks a little like rosemary, its taste is relatively sour, more like verdolagas (purslane).

You'll usually see tortitas de camarón (dried shrimp croquettes) paired for a Friday comida (midday meal) with romeritos en mole, although they are sometimes bathed in a caldillo de jitomate (tomato broth) and served with sliced nopalitos (cactus paddles). 

During Lent, the price of fish and seafood in Mexico goes through the roof due to the huge seasonal demand for meatless meals.  These beautiful huachinango (red snapper) come from Mexico's Pacific coast.

Chef Martín Rafael Mendizabal of La Trucha Alegre in Zitacuaro, Michoacán, prepared trucha deshuesada con agridulce de guayaba (boned trout with guava sweet and sour sauce) for the V Encuentro de Cocina Tradicional de Michoacán held in Morelia in December 2008.  The dish would be ideal for an elegant Lenten dinner.

Capirotada (kah-pee-roh-TAH-dah, Lenten bread pudding) is almost unknown outside Mexico.  Simple to prepare and absolutely delicious, it's hard to eat it sparingly if you're trying to keep a Lenten abstinence!  This photo shows capirotada as served by Carmen Titita Ramírez Degollado at the El Bajío restaurants in Mexico City.

Every family makes a slightly different version of capirotada: a pinch more of this, leave out that, add such-and-such.  Mexico Cooks! prefers to leave out the apricots and add dried pineapple.  Make it once and then tweak the recipe to your preference–but please do stick with traditional ingredients.

CAPIROTADA (Mexican Bread Pudding)

*4 bollilos, in 1" slices (small loaves of dense white bread)
5 stale tortillas
150 grams pecans
50 grams prunes
100 grams raisins
200 grams peanuts
100 grams dried apricots
1 large apple, peeled and sliced thin
100 grams grated Cotija cheese
Peel of one orange, two uses
*3 cones piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar)
Four 3" pieces of Mexican stick cinnamon
2 cloves
Butter
Salt

*If you don't have bolillo, substitute slices of very dense French bread.  If you don't have piloncillo, substitute 1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar.

A large metal or clay baking dish.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 300°F.

Toast the bread and spread with butter.  Slightly overlap the tortillas in the bottom and along the sides of the baking dish to make a base for the capirotada.  Prepare a thin syrup by boiling the piloncillo in 2 1/2 cups of water with a few shreds of cinnamon sticks, 2/3 of the orange peel, the cloves, and a pinch of salt. 

Place the layers of bread rounds in the baking dish so as to allow for their expansion as the capirotada cooks.  Lay down a layer of bread, then a layer of nuts, prunes, raisins, peanuts and apricots.  Continue until all the bread is layered with the rest.  For the final layer, sprinkle the capirotada with the grated Cotija cheese and the remaining third of the orange peel (grated).  Add the syrup, moistening all the layers  little by little.  Reserve a portion of the syrup to add to the capirotada in case it becomes dry during baking.

Bake uncovered until the capirotada is golden brown and the syrup is absorbed.  The bread will expand as it absorbs the syrup.  Remember to add the rest of the syrup if the top of the capirotada looks dry, and reserve plenty of syrup to pour over each serving.

Cool the capirotada to room temperature.  Do not cover until it is cool; even after it is cooled, leave the top ajar.

Try very hard not to eat the entire pan of capirotada at one sitting!

A positive thought for this Lent: give up discouragement, be an optimist.

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Taquitos dorados (left) and sopes (center) are typical antojitos mexicanos. Antojo, a word that means whim, becomes antojito (little whim) when it refers to these corn-based fried treats that are eaten as street food everywhere in Mexico.

From Baja California and Nuevo León on the northern border to Oaxaca and Chiapas in the south, from Veracruz on the east coast to Nayarit on the west, Mexico loves to eat. Here in Mexico, there's nothing more common on any menu than antojitos mexicanos: literally, "little Mexican whims."

Mexicans get hungry at all hours, and it's not entirely about physical need. Seductive aromas, exciting presentations on the plate and the crunchy sounds of chewing entice them to the 'little whims'. From the hand-lettered banner at the smallest street stand to the menu of the most elegant of restaurants, antojitos mexicanos are a staple on almost any Mexican bill of fare.

Taquitos dorados.  When you see tacos made in this way, they are always called by this name that means "little golden tacos".

Most Mexican restaurants in the United States specialize in only one aspect of Mexican cooking—antojitos mexicanos. These are the corn and tortilla-based specialties that include the enchiladas, taquitos dorados, tamales, quesadillas, and tostadas that all evolved directly from original indigenous cooking. In Mexico today, these corn-based antojitos mexicanos are popular with rich and poor alike.

Antojitos can include almost any traditional Mexican foods, but the term always refers to the corn kitchen. The gamut runs from budín azteca (a cream, cheese, chile and tortilla pie) to the numerous kinds of pozole (a hearty soup made with pork or chicken and fresh hominy) right through the alphabet to xolostle (a soup of chicken, corn and various spices).

Some of the most popular antojitos at restaurants and street stands are tacos, tostadas, sopes, gorditas, empanadas, enchiladas, and quesadillas. If you're North of the Border, most of those antojitos are not only easy to find in restaurants, but they're easy to prepare at home. Each is based on the same corn masa (dough).

The blue-gray oval antojitos are tlacoyos, a Mexico City specialty.  They are ordinarly stuffed with either frijolitos refritos or requesón (a cheese similar to ricotta), toasted on a comal (griddle), and topped with red or green salsa, lettuce, cheese, and crema (Mexican table cream).  The beige ovals to the left on the comal are for making quesadillas.

In some cities North of the Border, you can buy prepared masa at a tortillería (tortilla making shop).  Even if you don't live next door to a tortillería (tortilla-making shop), masa harina (corn flour for dough) is available at supermarkets and Latin specialty shops all over the USA and Canada. You're sure to find common brands such as Quaker or Maseca. A word to the wise: don't try to use standard cornmeal to make masa. Masa harina and cornmeal are very different products.  An antojito made from masa harina will not have the same texture and flavor as one prepared from a tortillería's fresh masa, but it will do in a pinch.

Once you've prepared a batch of masa, you're well on the way to a Mexican feast.  Today, let's make gorditas. You'll need basic utensils:

• Large, deep frying pan or wok
• Flat strainer with long handle
• A comal or heavy griddle

These basic ingredients will be used for the two antojitos:

• Prepared corn masa
• Large quantity of oil or lard for frying
• You'll also need frijoles refritos (well-fried beans) for both the sopes and the gorditas. You can buy them in cans if you'd rather take a shortcut to preparation, but traditionally you would prepare dried beans at home.

The Michoacán gorditas in the photo are made of blue corn masa and stuffed with frijolitos refritos. 

Gorditas
To prepare serving plates of the gorditas de frijoles, you'll need the following ingredients:

• Thinly shredded cabbage or lettuce
• Salsa verde or roja
• Crumbled queso Cotija or queso fresco
• Chopped fresh cilantro
• Small-diced, fresh white onion

Make a ball of masa a little larger than a tennis ball. Flatten it to about a five-inch round. On half of the round, heap a large spoonful of frijoles refritos and a small spoonful of cheese. Fold the filled masa in half and shape into a thick, flat disk approximately three inches in diameter. Fill and shape as many as you will need.

Heat enough lard or oil in the wok or large, deep frying pan to fry two or three gorditas at a time. Slide the gorditas into the fat and allow them to fry until deep golden brown. Remove the gorditas from the fat with the strainer and then keep them hot on the comal or griddle. Drain on paper towels if needed.

To serve, split each gordita in half approximately one-third of the way from one edge of the disk. Open a flap of the gordita and place on a plate. Top with either salsa verde or salsa roja, shredded cabbage or lettuce, the cilantro, the diced onion, and crumbled cheese.

These delicious antojitos  mexicanos will give you a real sense of being right here in the heart of Mexico. Put a mariachi CD in the player and get the whole family to help you with the preparations for your meal. All of you will enjoy the fun of preparing these typical and simple dishes from South of the Border. 

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