This page is not available You may need permission to access this page. This page is not available You may need permission to access this page. 001 Tacos de lengua burrito, carne asada y al pastor. Mexican food consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling.
The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand. The origins of the taco are not precisely known, and etymologies for the culinary usage of the word are generally theoretical. According to one etymological theory, the culinary origin of the term “taco” in Mexico can be traced to its employment, among Mexican silver miners, as a term signifying “plug. The miners used explosive charges in plug form, consisting of a paper wrapper and gunpowder filling. One possibility is that the word derives from the Nahuatl word “tlahco”, meaning “half” or “in the middle,” in the sense that food would be placed in the middle of a tortilla. There is significant debate about the origins of the Taco in Mexico, with some arguing that the taco predates the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico, since there is anthropological evidence that the indigenous people living in the lake region of the Valley of Mexico traditionally ate tacos filled with small fish.
Others argue that the advent of the taco is much more recent, with one of the more popular theories being that the taco was invented by silver miners in the 18th century, however the first mention of the word “taco” in Mexico was in the 1891 novel Los bandidos de Río Frío by Manuel Payno. It is said that unless a taquería offers tacos de lengua, it is not a real taquería. The hard-shell or crispy taco is a tradition that developed in the United States. The most common type of taco in the US is the hard-shell, U-shaped version, first described in a cookbook in 1949.
