What a fajita was originally distinguished by was the cut of meat: They’re made with skirt steak, which used to be a very cheap cut until fajitas made them popular. Nowadays, though, you’re just as likely to see things labeled as “chicken fajitas” or even “bean fajitas”, so that doesn’t really work any more. In practice, the distinction seems to be that a fajita has large-sliced sauteed onions and bell peppers. They’re also often just folded over once into a half-circle, instead of rolled up completely like a burrito, but that varies.
I grew up in San Diego, and the only times you’d expect to see beans on a burrito at a taco shop down there is on a veggie burrito or a “mixed” burrito (stewed beef, beans, and cheese, nothing else). Rice I’ve only seen on a shrimp burrito.
If you must have a starch in your burrito, go with the California burrito instead - carne asada, French fries, cheese, lettuce, guacamole, and salsa.
Muchas gracias!
My burrito of preference is beans and cheese. Nothing else. If it comes down to it, I can accept lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, and maybe some guacamole. Salsa and/or sour cream goes on the side. So does rice, if it must be there at all.
Don’t get me wrong; I love rice. Just not in (or with) a burrito.
Until I looked at images in response to this post, I had never in my life seen fajitas assembled before serving. The only way I have ever encountered them is as a dangerously hot skillet of goodness with tortillas on the side. Some assembly required.
I believe that burritos are like sandwiches - a proper one should be too big to eat and contain every component of the meal. So put me down for rice and beans.
That said, the most important thing for me is clear descriptions on menus. I don’t want to be making any assumptions about what they’re putting in there.
Also, there should be a balance of the ingredients. If it’s a carne asada burrito, I don’t want the meat to be a mere flavoring for a pound of rice.
By the way, best burrito in the world: the Beached Whale at Pepe Delgado’s in San Luis Obispo, California. Go eat one if you dare.
To keep out the riff-raff, obviously.
Didn’t work.
My mother, who’s very interested in nutrition, pointed out that every cuisine that had access to the ingredients, has developed a rice-and-bean dish. As you point out, that forms a complete protein.
Right. Authentic burritos have beans. Rice is just a cheap filler.
You already have corn or wheat in the tortilla.
I count my cast-iron fajita pan as the best/most useful thing I’ve bought at a yard sale. Best $2 I ever spent.
I don’t want the meat to be a mere flavoring for a grain of rice.
I recognize two types of burrito: the Freebird style with hot/warm meat, beans, and rice to which you add cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, salsa, guac, olives, etc. It’s rolled up and eaten out of your hand.
The second is the meat, beans, and rice rolled up and cooked in the oven with cheese and a chili sauce poured on top. This you eat with a fork.
But rice and beans always. Weirdos.
I’ve always used the following defintion for a burrito:
Beans + x wrapped in a flour tortilla
where x can be cheese, meat, veggies, etc (and any combination thereof). But the two key parts are beans and flour tortilla.
Speaking as a Mexican, my burro of preference is Sonoran style, a tortilla sobaquera filled with machaca or carne asada or chilorio with frijoles de la olla, not refritos. Forget the rice.
Brown rice, no beans. In a bowl not a wrap if that matters.
Sounds great, but not sure what a* tortilla sobaquera*is - are those the tortillas that are enormous and almost paper thin ? Cant find them here, even in Mexican areas.
I always order burritos without rice, ever since I realized that was possible. Although I’m not vegetarian, I don’t care for meat on a burrito: it just seems like a waste of good meat to me. (I also don’t like meat in a stir fry). Rice is just bland filler: give me the black beans, the cheese, the hot salsa, and maybe some corn and/or olives, and I’m a happy dude.
Yes, they are traditional in Sonora. The name comes from sobaco which is also the armpit. The tortilla reaches from the hand to the armpit.
In LA the fajitas are just meat and veg in a skillet or on an iron plate, with tortillas on the side so you can roll up your own. Burritos come pre-rolled. Here in Texas I don’t know about fajitas (I hate bell peppers so I never order them) but the burrito is very different here. For one thing most places have A burrito. One. It can have your choice of meat but will definitely have rice and beans. Maybe cheese, maybe not. The only places with more than one kind of burrito I have found here is (gag) Taco Bell or Del Taco (a little better), and they aren’t all that different, just bigger or smaller.
Yeah, I think all the better places serve their fajitas as some-assembly-required, but there are a lot of lowest-denominator places that serve them already assembled.
This sounds like an enchilada to me.