Know Your Food: Tasty Tacos
Those shells hold a lot of history
One of the world’s favourite hand-held foods is so popular it gets its own day: Taco Tuesday. The practice has even crossed the Atlantic to Scandinavia—except it happens there on Fridays. On Tacofredag, Swedish families top theirs with pineapple, cucumber, nuts and a yogurt sauce. And that’s just one way the world gets its fill.
But before they became an international hit, tacos took their first folds in Mexico. Authentic Mexican tacos use fresh tortillas made from ground corn or wheat, depending on the region. (Though corn plays an integral role in Mexican tradition and culture, the invading Spanish favoured wheat, since it was linked with the Holy Eucharist.)
The word taco may come from the Aztec tlahco, which means ‘half’ or ‘in the middle’. In the 1500s, the Aztec ruler Montezuma II Xocoyotzin used tortillas prepared on hot stones as spoons to hold food. But, according to Jeffrey Pilcher, author of Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food, the moniker more likely traces back to Mexican silver miners in the 18th century, for whom taco was the word for the thin sheets of paper wrapped around the gunpowder used to excavate ore.
Tacos arrived in America with the Mexican immigrants who came to mine our industrializing nation’s metals and build its railroads. At the time of its first written mention, in a newspaper in 1905, the taco was still largely a working-class food, an affordable item sold by street vendors in the Southwest.
The first taco restaurant, El Cholo, opened in Los Angeles in 1923. The now-ubiquitous Taco Bell came along in 1962. At that time, most Americans still didn’t know what tacos were. But Taco Bell’s offerings, created for th...
One of the world’s favourite hand-held foods is so popular it gets its own day: Taco Tuesday. The practice has even crossed the Atlantic to Scandinavia—except it happens there on Fridays. On Tacofredag, Swedish families top theirs with pineapple, cucumber, nuts and a yogurt sauce. And that’s just one way the world gets its fill.
But before they became an international hit, tacos took their first folds in Mexico. Authentic Mexican tacos use fresh tortillas made from ground corn or wheat, depending on the region. (Though corn plays an integral role in Mexican tradition and culture, the invading Spanish favoured wheat, since it was linked with the Holy Eucharist.)
The word taco may come from the Aztec tlahco, which means ‘half’ or ‘in the middle’. In the 1500s, the Aztec ruler Montezuma II Xocoyotzin used tortillas prepared on hot stones as spoons to hold food. But, according to Jeffrey Pilcher, author of Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food, the moniker more likely traces back to Mexican silver miners in the 18th century, for whom taco was the word for the thin sheets of paper wrapped around the gunpowder used to excavate ore.
Tacos arrived in America with the Mexican immigrants who came to mine our industrializing nation’s metals and build its railroads. At the time of its first written mention, in a newspaper in 1905, the taco was still largely a working-class food, an affordable item sold by street vendors in the Southwest.
The first taco restaurant, El Cholo, opened in Los Angeles in 1923. The now-ubiquitous Taco Bell came along in 1962. At that time, most Americans still didn’t know what tacos were. But Taco Bell’s offerings, created for the Anglo palate, were accessible and affordable and became wildly popular among Americans of non-Mexican heritage. The fast-food chain has since expanded to more than 7,000 locations worldwide, including in Japan, Saudi Arabia and India. (Feeling left out, Norwegians have a Facebook campaign called ‘Get Taco Bell to Norway’.)
Tacos can be filled to suit any palate. Regional favourites range from barbacoa (barbecued meat) to carne asada (steak) to nopal (cactus) to pescado (fish). After the Spanish introduced pigs to the Yucatán in the 16th century, cochinita pibil (slow-cooked pork) tacos emerged. Then when Lebanese immigrants came to Mexico in the early 20th century, they brought their shawarma tradition and vertical rotisseries. The lamb they had used for gyros and kebabs was substituted with more widely available pork and pineapple, and the classic taqueria menu item tacos al pastor (shepherd’s tacos) was born.
Perhaps the best thing about tacos is that they can be whatever you want them to be. Whichever delicious way they’re filled, they are well worth the mess you’ll likely make as you bite into them.