Tortillas on the Side

January 4, 2023 8:30 AM

Despite being pretty familiar with Mexican foods, I’ve never figured out exactly how to use the tortillas served on the side with an entree. Do you make a few whole tacos out of your meal, or do you rip it into pieces and scoop a bite at a time? Google is (not so) surprisingly useless with this search.
posted by hwyengr to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

Best answer: Speaking as the daughter of a Mexican mom, tortillas are used as utensils. I was taught you tear off pieces of flour tortilla and use your dominant hand to scoop up what's on the plate. I still use tortillas that way when cooking Mexican food, and it always amused my mom--as it does me with my white husband--that my late stepfather didn't get it and used regular utensils. You go visit my family in Texas and it's a basket of fresh homemade flour tortillas to use like you would a spoon. (Obviously if your meal is a little trickier or messier, use a fork or spoon to fill your tortilla pieces.)
posted by Kitteh at 8:39 AM on January 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Edible spoons are a culinary technology that mark the associated culture as advanced enough to have worked out what a waste of time washing metal ones is. Edible plate wiping sponges likewise.
posted by flabdablet at 8:59 AM on January 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Rather than tacos, I use skills acquired while processing Moo Shu Pork to make burritos.
posted by Rash at 9:06 AM on January 4, 2023

Best answer: There's no one true way. Although, I do like Kitteh does and use pieces of tortilla to scoop things off my plate. But my mother will carefully make taquitos if she can and thinks my method is uncouth.

If you are having soup, you roll up a tortilla and hold it one hand, taking bites out of it between spoonfuls of soup. This is how you will do it also at a "fancier" meal where slopping your food around with something in your fingers may not look so elegant.
posted by vacapinta at 9:39 AM on January 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

It depends on what you're eating and personal taste. If you're eating a dish that is mostly a platter of meat or a stew that is quite thick, you might make yourself tacos, especially if the main dish is shared. If you're eating something that is a more liquid stew, you might tear pieces of tortilla off and scoop or you might roll up a tortilla and dip it. You might roll up a tortilla and eat it between bites, potentially with a little salsa, lime or salt on it. You might have a tortilla to start before eating or a tortilla to fill you up after your main dish. You might not eat the tortillas at all. You might eat all the tortillas and ask for more.
posted by ssg at 10:12 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Like Kitteh, I am the daughter of a Mexican mom, but my family is a corn tortilla family. With corn tortillas, it's most common (as ssg says) to roll up the tortilla and use it as a utensil, helping to scoop up food and then munching off the end. OMG now I want a bunch of warm tortillas.
posted by correcaminos at 10:38 AM on January 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

There's a lot of variation from place to place, too. For a while I was involved with a research group that was about half Mexican and half Guatemalan, and at lunch once someone pointed out that you could tell who was who from their tortilla technique — the Mexicans in the group were mostly on team "make a taco" and the Guatemalans were mostly on team "rip and scoop" or "nibble between bites."
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:57 PM on January 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

My Pa rips and scoops flour tortillas for scrambled eggs.
posted by Mister Cheese at 7:31 PM on January 4, 2023

Posted too early. He never taught me how to eat with his method -- I only learned to make tacos. But this is a topic makes wish were some ethnographic work on it. My father-in-law eats with a similar pattern. Both from different parts of Texas, grew up a few decades apart.
posted by Mister Cheese at 7:45 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]