Theme Music: [Music.]
Jane: This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions
from curious kids all over the world--just like you--and we
find answers. I know I'm supposed to be focused on work
right now, but it's lunch time when I'm making this episode and
I'm feeling really hungry. What am I feeling hungry for, you
might wonder. Why thanks for asking. I'm feeling hungry for
tacos! Good thing that in this episode we're headed to a
taqueria. A taqueria is a restaurant or food stand that
makes and sells tacos. Tacos originated in Mexico, but
they're popular all over the world, and a lot of you have
sent us questions about this popular and ever-evolving food.
So to learn more and get some answers to your preguntas
deliciosas, I went to Austin, Texas to talk with two people
who know a lot about tacos.
Edgar Rico: My name is Edgar Rico. I am the chef and co owner
here at Nixta Taqueria in Austin, Texas.
Sara Mardanbigi: Hey, y'all I am Sarah Mardanbigi. I am the other
half of Nixta Taqueria, and I do all of our operations.
Jane: All right, let's talk tacos. We have a lot of taco
questions from kids.
Eleni: My name is Eleni, and I am seven years old, and I live
in Lakewood, Ohio. Who first made tacos?
Ben: My name is Ben. I am six years old. I live in Ithaca, New
York. Who invented tacos?
Audrey: My name is Audrey. I'm nine years old. I live in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Who first made tacos?
Jane: Where did tacos come from?
Jane: A tortilla is an essential part of a taco. Now we don't
Edgar Rico: This is a very hotly-debated topic, actually.
But from what researchers do say, there's kind of two ways
know exactly when people started eating tacos, but Edgar says the
that tacos kind of were invented. I mean, one of them,
definitely, for sure, was that the native people, the
Mesoamericans that were living in Mexico, so like Aztecs miners
essence of a taco, that corn tortilla filled with some kind
that were living there, they used to eat a lot of they
of meat or vegetable, has long been a staple in Mesoamerica.
weren't necessarily, maybe called a taco, but they were
eating a round disk made of corn tortilla, essentially.
That's a historical region that encompassed parts of Mexico and
Central America. The Aztec people were eating corn
tortillas, ground up corn that's been turned into a dough and
then flattened out, for thousands of years. And Edgar
points out that many people think the word taco comes from--
Edgar Rico: the native language called Nahuatl, which is spoken
by Aztec people.
Jane: But another idea is that tacos as we know them today are
more recently tied to the late 1800s.
Edgar Rico: There was a lot of mining that was happening in
Mexico, and a lot of the miners who would work would get these
corn-filled tortillas, and they would fill them with a little
guiso, so to speak, or like a little braised meat, is what we
call it, guiso in Spanish. They would take the couple of these
with them as a little lunch, and they would go work the mines.
And, you know, a taco is a nice kind of package in a meal. It's
all wrapped up, and you can take it with you, and it's
transportable. And these guys would eat these throughout the
day, you know, they would maybe stop for a little break, have a
little taco, and be on their way. The first published recipe
they do say was in the early 1800s and when there was a
recipe in that it did say the taco, and that original recipe
had corn tortilla filled with like a chile verde filling.
Jane: How did tacos come to the United States if they originated
in Mexico?
Edgar Rico: Well, I would say tacos originally came in
California through the miners that were mining there. They
took that same idea, we can have tacos here too, as we're working
on these mines. Because at that time, also too, California was
Mexico.
Jane: Large parts of the western United States used to be part of
Mexico. This includes California, Texas, New Mexico,
Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and
Wyoming. They became a part of the United States after the
Mexican American War in 1848. But it wasn't until more than
100 years later, in the 1960s, that tacos became really, really
popular all over the US.
Edgar Rico: Tacos in particularly spread like
wildfire, and the idea of tacos became a mainstream revolution
throughout the US was actually in a little town in San
Bernardino, the same town actually where another iconic
brand that we all probably know, called McDonald's, started. And
there was a guy there named Glen Bell, aka the founder of Taco
Bell. He originally had a fast food joint, a place called
Bell's Burgers, where he used to sell hamburgers. But as
McDonald's was happening down the road, he quickly realized
that maybe the hamburger was not the route that he should take.
And ironically enough, there was a place very close to him, a
world famous now place in taco history called Mitla Cafe. They
were making a little hard shell taco, where they would fry a
corn tortilla. They would put a little bit of ground beef,
shredded lettuce, little tomato, a little bit of shredded cheese
on top. And Glen Bell used to eat these things every night and
would try and take a crack at figuring out how to how to make
this. And eventually, I guess, the owner of Mitla Cafe invited
him into the kitchen one day and was like, "Hey, I'm going to
show you, because you keep coming in here every day and
eating these things." And eventually he learned how to do
it. And then Mr. Glen Bell decided to take this to his own
establishment and make a fast food restaurant called Taco Bell
that we all know. But yeah, tacos, after Glen Bell got his
hands on it, it would never be the same.
Connor: Hi. My name's Connor. I'm eight years old. I live in
Winnipeg, Manitoba, and my question is, why are there soft
shells and hard shells, and what are they made of?
Jane: This has to do with the crispiness of the tortilla. The
crispy fried tortillas make for hard shell tacos you find at
fast food chains like Taco Bell and in the grocery store.
Edgar Rico: I think the idea for what most Americans think of
tacos is actually that hard shell taco. But you know, it's
the evolution of the taco, you know.
Jane: Edgar says those hard shell tacos are an American
invention. Traditionally, in Mexico, tortillas tend to be
soft. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. But food is
fascinating because it's always changing and reflecting how our
cultures are changing. As people move from one place to another,
they bring the foods that they grew up with. But sometimes you
have to switch things up a bit and use ingredients that are
more easily available where you are now. Sometimes, especially
if you open up a restaurant, you make changes to make the dish
more approachable to local customers. Think about other
foods that are really popular in the United States that
originated elsewhere, like pizza. People coming into the
United States as immigrants brought along their favorite
regional dishes, and then they blended them with the
ingredients, like tomatoes, that were available in their new
home. And so our food is always changing and adapting. Sarah
says tacos followed a similar path.
Sara Mardanbigi: Taco Tuesday, that never used to be a thing.
There's different foods feel very unfamiliar or scary, but
then they become sort of the fabric of that culture over
time. For a while, Japanese food, Korean food, there was a
stigma around them, and the same thing with Mexican food, and now
tacos are a part of that culture. It's burgers, pizza and
tacos. It's now in the American lexicon of food, which is kind
of crazy.
Jane: Now that we're up to the present day. Let's talk about
what a taco is and isn't. Turns out, there's a lot of debate.
Kashton: My name is cash, dine, and I'm six years old, and I
live in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I'm in first grade. And why do
tacos have sauce?
Edgar Rico: To make them more delicious, more than anything.
If we're looking at like a basic street taco, in essence, the
foundation of it is the tortilla, your filling--and it
doesn't always necessarily have to be meat. It can be
vegetables. One of my favorite tacos in the world is actually
my mom's rajas con crema, which is a simple dish of roasted
chilies with a little bit of cheese and like a little bit of
heavy cream, all mixed together. It's delicious. But when you're
adding your salsa to your taco, that, for me, it's the part that
kind of adds that little magic, adds that little bit of jazz to
your taco. And it's nice because, you know, most
taquerias that you go to, they will let you kind of choose
whether it's how spicy do you want it? Do you like salsas that
are a little more bold and smokiness? Or do you want
something that's a lot fresher, like an avocado salsa, or like a
guacamole per se? That's just the personalization, the
customization of the taco for you. That's kind of the fun part
for me about the tacos.
Sara Mardanbigi: And some people don't even put salsa on there.
Like it's a choose your own adventure. If you're like, I'm a
meat and potatoes guy and I just want the tortilla, the meat,
maybe some onions on top of it, like, you can do that too. You
won't be judged for the way that you build your taco, because it
is a very personal thing. So go for it. We're here to support
it. We're here to support the taco in every shape and form.
Jane: So the key is we listen and we don't judge.
Faye: Hi, my name is Leah. I'm five years old, and I live in
Winnipeg, Manitoba. What kind of meat do you put in tacos?
Jane: Now you both said you can have whatever you want in your
taco. But can you list off some of the popular meats and types
of meats and ways that meat is cooked in tacos, just to start
getting our mouths watering?
Edgar Rico: Absolutely. So I would say in America, the four
most popular meats ordered on a taco, one of them is probably
going to be the one I feel like that everyone knows, which is
carne asada. Carne asada is traditionally a northern style
of making meat in which people in the north of Mexico will just
get some really great beef, and they'll just literally, simply
marinate it, hit it with a little salt, and grill it over
and open fire, chop it up, put it onto a tortilla, and voila,
carne asada taco. And then another taco style that has a
lot of cool history to it is the al pastor taco. The al pastor
taco means the shepherd's taco. And this was actually an
invention that was brought over by the Lebanese people who
immigrated over to Mexico in the late 1800s they actually used to
make a little shawarma. But then, you know, a lot of the
clientele of Mexican people were there wanted something a little
more spicy, and they didn't actually like lamb as much, so
they wanted to maybe use another protein that was more suitable
for their palate. So they transitioned to pork.
Eventually, that evolved to where we've gotten now, to the
modern day al pastor taco, which then somehow, I don't know where
exactly in the history, but pineapple was added to the taco,
and it has become an iconic street food all throughout
Mexico and the US.
And then I would say the third most popular style is probably
going to be carnitas. Carnitas is also a regional style of taco
making, or meat making, typically found in the state of
Michoacan. And with that, you take just pork, literally tender
and falling off the bone. And the last one, I would say, also,
is barbacoa. That's another very, very popular style of meat
making that's also traditionally found in the North, but
specifically it comes from a place called Texcoco. You build
a big fire pit underneath the earth, at least like five to six
feet, generally, is what you want to give yourself. But after
you build this hole, you then line it with a bunch of bricks,
and then you make a big, big, big fire. And then after that
fire burns down, and you just have a bed of embers, you then
add in your pot with your meat in it, and then you bury it, and
you let it cook overnight for about 10 to 12 hours, and the
next day, you have a delicious, delicious treat in front of you,
which is called barbacoa.
Jane: But if you're not a big lover of meat, there are still
lots of different types of tacos you might really like. In
coastal regions of Mexico, for example, you'll find fish and
seafood tacos. And there are also many types of tacos that
are vegetarian.
Sara Mardanbigi: There's something called hoja santa,
which is this sort of like anisey, kind of smoky herb that
grows that they use a lot. There's a lot of different
applications, like with squash, with pumpkins, with mushrooms,
and thinking about like the pre-Hispanic side of Mexico,
there were a lot more vegetable forward dishes. So for any
vegetarians or vegans out there, you can make still a really
beautiful and delicious taco.
Jane: Yum. I am salivating just hearing about all of these
delicious taco types. Coming up, we'll talk about why tortillas,
and especially corn, tortillas, are such an important part of
Mexican cuisine. Stay tuned.
BREAK: BREAK
Jane: I'm Jane Lindholm. Today on But Why, we're talking all
things tacos. We've learned about some of the most popular
meat-based taco fillings: carne asada, al pastor, carnitas and
barbacoa. We've also talked about salsa, the sauce. But if
we're talking about tacos, we have to talk about the tortilla.
After all, the tortilla is what holds everything together. I
mentioned earlier that traditionally in Mexico,
tortillas are soft and round and made with flour or corn, but
people have been making tortillas with corn for much
longer than with flour, and that's because corn is a native
vegetable to Mexico, whereas wheat, which is what flour is
made of, isn't. At Nixta Taqueria, where our guests Edgar
Rico and Sarah Mardanbigi work, they are sticking with corn.
Sara Mardanbigi: There's a phrase called "sin mais no hay
pais," which means without corn, there's, you know, there's not a
country, there's not a culture. It's a huge part of the culture
in Mexico. It's part of the DNA. They said that was part of the
first civilizations there. It's how it sustained them.
Jane: Sin mais no hay pais. Without corn, there's no
country. Wow. That gives you a sense of how important corn is
to Mexican culture and cuisine. But for corn to become a
tortilla, it first needs to go through an ancient process
called nixtamalization. That's a really big word.
Edgar Rico: Nixtamalization is a word that sounds very daunting,
but it's just a word for essentially the science and the
magic of what happens to corn for you to create a corn
tortilla. You can't have corn tortilla without nixtamalizing
corn and the process in which you break down this corn to get
you a corn tortilla starts with you getting some really
beautiful dried corn, preferably heirloom.
Jane: And heirloom basically means an older species or genus
or type of a vegetable or an animal or a plant.
Edgar Rico: Absolutely. Yeah. So in Mexico, specifically, there
are over 30 varieties of corn that are native to Mexico, and
they can come in all sorts of different vast colors, from
green, purple, red. You then add this corn to some water that's
boiling, and inside of this water, you're going to add the
secret magical ingredient called cal. Cal, essentially, is a
derivative of limestone, and you're gonna actually let it
cook for about 30 to 45 minutes, and then after cooking the corn
in this boiling water, you actually let it sit, and you let
it sit overnight and soak in this solution for about 10 to 12
hours. And that's, as it's soaking, the magic of
nixtamalization is happening. And essentially, with
nixtamilization, it's gonna help break down this corn for you to
actually be able to digest it better.
Jane: The human body isn't very good at digesting the outer
layer of a corn kernel, which is why, if you have corn on the cob
for dinner, it'll mostly pass right through your digestive
system untouched (which you already know if you listen to
our recent poop episode). But nixtamilization changes the
chemical structure of the corn and makes it easier for our
bodies to digest.
Edgar Rico: So the magic of nixtamalization helps unlock
corn's fullest potential. So it unlocks all the natural
nutrients that are in within corn. It also activates the
natural glutens and starches that are within the corn for you
to be able to help make a corn tortilla. In essence, that is
kind of the magic of how nixtamalization works and why
it's a really special thing to do. But this thing also is
thousands and thousands of years old, and it's something that we
still get to carry on today and doing this tradition of making
tortillas. And it's a cool way to kind of almost, kind of look
back into the past.
Sara Mardanbigi: And it's it's a slow food. It's about 14 to 15
hours from start to finish, from the time you take the corn, the
time you're cooking it, to the time it sits overnight for about
10 hours, til the following morning, when we actually grind
the corn into masa. So we have something inside our restaurant
called a molino, which is a wet mill. So it is where you take
two wheels, and they're made out of volcanic stones with
different etchings in there. So as the corn is going through
there, it's slowly grinding against each other and making
that masa.
Jane: Masa, by the way, is dough that's made from corn.
Sara Mardanbigi: So it takes a lot of time, a lot of skill. The
amount of love that goes into it is it's not a like one-hour
thing. You have to really take the time and put some care into
it.
Jane: And Sara says this love and care begins on the farm. A
lot of farmers who choose to grow heirloom varieties of corn
do it because they care deeply about the land they cultivate.
Faye: My name is Faye. I'm six years old, and I live in
Alameda, California. Why is corn different colors?
Eve: My name is Eve. I am seven years old. I live in New York.
Why are some corn kernels yellow and some white?
Jane: You mentioned corn can come in many different colors.
Why does it come in different colors?
Edgar Rico: There's different climates and different factors
that play into why corn ends up becoming different colors. So
one of them is, you know, just the natural genetics of some of
these corns, like those 30 varieties are naturally just
have these colors that they've been growing in that fashion for
many years. But the climate will take a big part in that too. So,
you know, maybe some climates are a little wetter, and you're
going to have just a different hue in terms of the color of the
corn, but also where it's grown even. I mean, we happen to grow
corn right in our backyard, actually, because we have a big
farm in our backyard. And last year, we noticed that some of
the corn, because we grew two different varieties, but on this
border of where we were growing some of this purple corn and
some of this red corn, some of that corn started fusing
together. Because the way corn releases its seeds is through
the top. When you see like these little kind of like hairs of
corn, you'll see that that's where some of the seeds get
released into the air. Sometimes, as it's landing on
these silks of corn, they'll just kind of latch onto it, and
then it'll start taking fold into the corn, and you'll get
these really beautiful kind of cross color of corn that'll be
purple and yellow, or it might be like the one that we had that
was purple and pink.
Jane: Learning about how tortillas are made was making me
hungry, so I asked Edgar to show me how they do it at Nixta.
Edgar Rico: We are here in the Nixta Taqueria kitchen about to
make some tortillas. And what we're hearing right now is our
corn being mixed up. It's been ground up. We're adding a little
bit of salt to it, just to give it a little bit of flavor. I'll
let you first feel. So it's gonna feel...
Jane: Kind of like Play Doh!
Edgar Rico: Exactly. That's exactly what I always tell
people. You're gonna feel like a light moisture in your hand as
you're kind of moving it around your hands. And yeah, the
texture is very much so like Play Doh. And then this one in
particular, we're adding a little bit of guajillo chili so
we can get a really nice bright red hue and also a little bit of
flavor. And at this point, we are ready to make a corn
tortilla. And with this machine, it's gonna help roll your corn.
It's gonna roll it onto this roller. And what we're looking
for is for it to catch fully, like so, kind of see how that's
catching right now? That's exactly what we're looking for.
And now we're going to start bringing them out like so. And
then it has three different layers where we're going to cook
our corn tortilla. So this one on the top is going to be your
lowest temperature. The middle is going to have the medium
heat, and the bottom is going to have the highest heat ratio.
Boom. It's going to go on through the bottom, and then
it's gonna come out through here on the bottom.
Jane: That's now a cooked tortilla.
Edgar Rico: Yeah.
Jane: Cool.
Edgar Rico: Eat it.
Jane: Really delicious.
Edgar Rico: You definitely taste that flavor. It's so much
different than a store-bought corn tortilla.
Jane: Oh yeah, for sure.
Edgar Rico: You get, like, all those really nice, earthy notes
and they're nice and soft and pillowy.
Jane: They're really lovely.
Edgar told me they make over a thousand tortillas every day at
Nixta Taqueria. We're going to post some videos from Nixta's
kitchen on our Instagram page at butwhy_kids so you can watch
Edgar make a fresh tortilla, too. Has your idea of a perfect
taco changed at all listening to this episode? What type of taco
are you most excited to try next? We'd love to know! But
here's a really controversial question we have for you: is a
taco a sandwich? What do you think? Have your adult record a
video of you telling us whether you think a taco counts as a
sandwich and why or why not. We'll share videos on our
Instagram and YouTube pages. You can get an adult to help you see
them.
Thanks to Edgar Rico and Sarah Mardanbigi of Nixta Taqueria in
Austin, Texas. It was so cool to visit their restaurant. That's
it for this episode. If you have a question about anything, have
an adult record you asking it. It's easy to do on a smartphone
using an app like voice memos. Then have your adult email it to
questions@butwhykids.org. But Why is produced by Melody
Bodette, Sarah Baik and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public and
distributed by PRX. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo. Check
out our YouTube series, But Why bites. We put out a short,
bite-sized video episode every other Friday. Our theme music is
by Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two weeks with an all new
episode, until then, stay curious--and hungry!