https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0140145230/ref=dbs_a_def_rw...
"...edible food tape (to hold together those messy meals like burritos)..."
This is all clearly laid out here: https://cuberule.com
We would all do well to be able to apply this same thinking, and not just to classifying a burrito.
A sandwich to me is a meal you can 1) hold with your hands, 2) enjoy while gambling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sand...
The Cube Rule (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30793622 - March 2022 (136 comments)
The Cube Rule of Food Identification (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18658684 - Dec 2018 (183 comments)
https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2018/04/history-origin-bu...
Just for the anecdote, I’m back from France and tacos there are a weird sandwich. But I’ve always seen them made using a hard-shell made of corn, that breaks way too easy. And I believe that’s considered heretic in the US, so I’m not even sure what you would expect an actual tacos to be!
I picture American tacos (which are not good tacos, though I wouldn’t say I “disdain” them per se).
Really, they actually tried this? What were they thinking??
Certainly not heretic. You'll find hard-shell corn tacos in pretty much any US grocery store. They do break easily but they're what I would tend to use for a taco with ground beef. Otherwise, I'd usually use soft corn.
A burrito is as well a single ingredient food (read: no fillers like beans and rice unless that is specifically the single ingredient in the burrito). The primary difference is that a burrito is usually on flour tortillas and is wrapped to be held with two hands, often having substantially more content than a taco, which is specifically intended to be eaten with one hand.
The biggest criticism I'm raising is the American (outside of border states like CA, AZ, NM, and TX where they don't put up with that shit) tendency to accept cheaper, filler ingredients as primary to the contents of a burrito. This is a serious departure, where in border states and mexico, burritos might come with rice and beans on the side, they are never substituted as primary ingredients.
The broadest point is that there are many many ways of combining some filling, tortillas, and other ingredients. Just because it has those components does not a taco or burrito make.
Parker, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20080502160526/http://www.iccjou...
There are borrowed words in English where the meaning in the borrowing language is different than in the original (source) language. There are even terms, such as this one in Te Ao Maori, 'Takatāpui', where the meaning is intentionally different depending on whether the speaker is speaking Te Ao Maori or English, because of careful and intentional distinctions about preserving the meanings of words[1].
Things can get even more complicated when we attempt to remove our native language as a default frame-of-reference, such as attempting to determine what exactly is correct (or not, and if not, how) in the following conversation:
> Q: "What does 'sushi' mean?"
> A: "It's Japanese for 'burrito'.
Having lived in San Diego and SF… they do indeed put up with that shit in many parts of those border states.
Fantastic comment, though. :)
The moment you "wrap" (fully enclose in a tubular way), I think it moves to a different part of the embedded space which includes all wraps (https://worldwrapps.com/). The mission-style burrito definitely has the "rice and beans inside" in addition to the primary (meat, veggie, whatever), this sounds very much like the "in Texas, chili doesn't have beans" argument.
Because the reality is that you can find tacos and food items of many variations in Mexico (or wherever) that the people there will call a taco, and they'll do it without any of the sort of snobbery you find in these comments.
Like, tacos are a single ingredient food item? Then why can I find people slopping on any number of side items down the street in Guadalajara? And it's still labeled a taco? They really need to read HN and become illuminated. They're wrong.
Frankly, the idea that Mexican cuisine (or whichever cuisine) was frozen in some snapshot back in history—and anything they do eat since then is "incorrect"—does more to erase reality than pointing out that maybe the cuisine is much more varied than someone on HN thinks.
And all of this is said before even getting into regional variations like what happens to cuisines once they cross borders into different cultures. Americans eat hard-shell tacos? It's a lot more interesting to me to explore why that is than to roll our eyes at how people are ugh doing it wrong. Maybe artifacts of one culture changing when they enter other cultures is the beauty of culture rather something that needs to be corrected.
I think this is because Americans feel big-brotherly protective (in a creepy way) about their Latin American communities.
Altered versions of e.g. Italian food (e.g. pasta carbonara with cream, deep dish pizza, submarine sandwiches, chicken parmesan), Japanese food (California roll, Philadelphia roll), Chinese food (fortune cookies, General Tso's chicken, beef and broccoli) don't cause similar reactions.
Like hell they don't! Most of your examples are just ignorable new inventions, but the reinterpretation of spaghetti carbonara (not pasta carbonara, you heathen) as a shitty cream sauce? I'll go to the mat to decry that horrendously disgusting perversion.
Anyone that prefers that hot mess probably also puts ranch dressing on everything, including pizza, and thinks Velveeta "queso" is delicious.
Kolaches mean different things in different parts of the U.S.
In Chicago, they're often filled with sweet things, and sold by mom-and-pop shops and bakeries.
In Houston, they're mainly for breakfast, with things like eggs, bacon, sausage, brisket, etc. and sold by chains like Shipley's and Kolache Factory: https://kolachefactory.com
Recently, the Houston version of kolaches has made inroads into Chicago: https://www.howdykolache.com
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pączki
Paczki Day is almost as big a holiday in Chicago as Casimir Pulaski Day.
https://reluctantentertainer.com/buttermilk-pancake-pigs-in-...
https://www.texascooking.com/recipes/sausage-bundt-cake.htm
https://newfoundland.ws/christmas-old-time-pork-cake-recipe/
Referring to the Finnish variety or other ?
How 'bout this definition: I'll eat whatever I want, call it whatever I want, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, because this isn't France and you're never gonna get a law passed on it. As they say in various kink communities, "don't yuck my yum".
This is a disturbing way to put it, because I learned that phrase from my kids' preschool. :D
The other reason being you have to subject yourself to going to New York to get it, and nobody should have to do that to themselves.
But rice and beans taste good. Even rice and beans alone is really tasty. Wrap it up in a tortilla with hot sauce and sour cream.. delicious! The meat sweetens the deal, but I can easily enjoy a burrito with no meat.
Whether you call that a burrito or make up some other word for it makes little difference, it is what it is, and it tastes damn good. It tastes great whether you call it a burrito or a 'rice-and-beans wrap with pork'.
Curious which is the traditional, the soft taco or the hard shell we know of from that franchise with a bell?
They do? Bread in any form is not a major element of every culture. The Hawaiian equivalent seems to have been poi, which isn't even solid.
A Navajo friend of mine made amazing flatbread. They call it Fry Bread. Tastes wonderful.
No they're not.
If it's wheat, that's from German immigrants into what became Texas.
That's a tostada. There are words for these things. A tostada is made and served completely differently.
Second, beans and rice have no place in a burrito and Americans who accept this from their burrito manufacturers have been being scammed for decades.
Arguably, tostadas are defined more by the form of the flat, crispy torilla than by what you out on top of it.
Beans and/or rice presence in a burrito is a regional distinction. Personally, I don't like the all meat burritos that are standard in many areas.
And once you travel beyond mexico you will realize there is a whole range of food that overlaps with those categories. Is a baleada a burrito, a taco, or it's own separate thing?
You're not kidding, I'm from SoCal and we have the largest Mexican population due to proximity and I grew up going to Baja for cheap weekends with my family and got to eat lots of Mexican food--it wasn't really my thing, and I do not like corn in general, but once in a while was fine.
So, I thought I had a solid idea of what Mexican food was, and being from SoCal it's not uncommon to see things like fries inside of a burrito as the most 'white-people' option, which oddly I'm a fan of especially hashbrowns.
Then I moved to Colorado and realized that what I had been eating was strictly localized to the Pacific side of Mexico, all the stuff I saw that was called Mexican was like nothing I had ever seen before. Recently I went back after leaving Boulder and I ordered a burrito not thinking much about it when I visited a friend and he chose a spot nearby to meet up for drinks. I totally forgot that the Mexican population in Colorado is mainly from the border with Texas and some from the Gulf area so what came back was this monster drenched in sauce.
I asked if they messed up my order, but he said that all burritos come like that unless specified otherwise, which apparently is quite common in the Mid-west--this is contentious but I think CO is definitely the mid-west and it's culture reflects that as I mainly lived in SoCal, Colorado and Hawaii when I've lived in the US.
Honestly, it was like a big enchilada, which I could only stomach 1/2 of as it was way too much for my palette.
I think a gyros and kabab resembles a burrito the most to anything else, both which I enjoy way more as their is a greater emphasis on lots of pickled things with intriguing sauces--a garlic-heavy tzatziki makes everything taste better.
But honestly the thing is it's a staple found in just about any culture and cuisine: meat and veg wrapped in wheat based outer layer.
You might be thinking of the hardshell taco, which is a US invention.
Rice and beans are served on the side with Tacos.
If you’ve worked in a Taco truck, you’d know that it’s exactly the same ingredients going into both. Your spoon goes into the same buckets. Meat is grilled in the same way. Tacos may have corn tortilla or flour, we can quibble about that.
Pfft, Roy Choi flipped the taco game: corn vs flour is less interesting than kimchi or oi muchim inside of a taco. Honestly, I think both are amazing and Korean and Mexican food match so well. It's definitely a uniquely SoCal thing, but to be honest after having Kogi I can't eat tacos without Korean based ingredient and enjoy it anymore.
How is the the corn in a corn tortilla not flour? If the corn (which might be maize) is milled then it has become flour. Maybe instead of flour you meant wheat.