Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/23/why-restaurant-burritos-are-be.html
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Because I don’t have to cook or clean up?
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Freshly made tortillas, flour or corn is the trick. Simple and easy, just like it should be.
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Also salt. Lots of salt. Would be my guess. And fat and grease. You know all the tasty bad for you stuff you leave out at home.
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I make pretty decent burritos but where the restaurant ones really shine is really good tortillas primarily, a good rice and beans is important, and at home i don’t cook with meat but restaurants and food trucks typically make their meats way better than i could ever hope but if its vegetarian fare i can make pretty good alternatives.
That said my mom is an excellent cook, her stuff easily beats a lot of latino restaurants.
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This is making a lot of incorrect assumptions about my burrito skills!
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Having worked in numerous kitchens in my younger years I know how to make a damn fine burrito. I am wary of restaurant food unless I know the cooks. As George Orwell sez:
" In the kitchen the dirt was worse. It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup—that is, if he is not going to drink it himself. He is an artist, but his art is not cleanliness. To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment. When a steak, for instance, is brought up for the head cook’s inspection, he does not handle it with a fork. He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and licks it to taste the gravy, runs it round and licks again, then steps back and contemplates the piece of meat like an artist judging a picture, then presses it lovingly into place with his fat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning. When he is satisfied, he takes a cloth and wipes his fingerprints from the dish, and hands it to the waiter. And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy—his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair. Whenever one pays more than, say, ten francs for a dish of meat in Paris, one may be certain that it has been fingered in this manner. In very cheap restaurants it is different; there, the same trouble is not taken over the food, and it is just forked out of the pan and flung on to a plate, without handling. Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it." - Down & Out In Paris & London
Also, never order fish on Monday and always tip generously.
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Love Orwell.
Rule for life: Food quality will markedly improve on a second restaurant visit after tipping 25% the first time.
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What’s the trick for skipping having to eat the first time, though?
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Great post with bullet item synopsis of video: excellent, thanks.
Mission burritos: huge tortilla + steamed + stretched = perfection
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Supermarket readymade tortillas always suck, no matter what brand or size. However, Fresca frozen uncooked tortillas are really good. They only take a couple of minutes to cook and the texture is much less like bad bread and more like those awesome taco shop tortillas. Only problem is they’re eight inches, which limits you to a pretty small burrito.
(Don’t buy them from that link whatever you do, get them for a few bucks a two-pack at Costco)
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Depends on the grocery store if you live somewhere with a good mexican population. If the stores have access to local tortillerias that make good quality fresh tortillas they can be pretty fucking excellent. Of course if you can go directly to the tortillerias/mexican markets to buy it directly from them, or the pre-made masa, that’s even better.
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fair enough–American supermarket chain readymade tortillas all suck.
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Simple. Don’t go the second time, either. 
Yup. The Walmart by my house (yeah, not a Walmart fan but I am kind of now?) has a someone there freshly making tortillas in the bakery and you can watch them crank out those tortillas. They are so delicious you can eat them plain.
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Yeah i totally knew what you meant 
And not every person in the US might be lucky enough to have access to fresher made tortillas, the standard stuff you find in stores is serviceable but i would not consider them to be good.
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Best home made burrito i ever made was made with hand made tortillas I made myself, so it’s definitely true that the tortilla is important! This makes me want to try making burritos soon because I never tried wrapping them right after.
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Why restaurant burritos are better
See also: sandwiches
Because I can’t wrap a burrito worth shit. I’d much rather someone else do it.
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