Huarache
The huarache is a long, flat oval of corn masa named for a sandal, dressed across its whole surface so the base is half the eating rather than a wrapper for the topping.
Step into our Flatbread Sandwiches category - your passport to a culinary journey across cultures! Explore the world of sandwiches made with versatile flatbreads, such as the pocket-friendly Pita from the Middle East or the cheesy Quesadilla from Mexico. Learn how these breads, thin but packed with flavors, make for the perfect vessels for an array of fillings. Remember: whether it's enveloping a Gyro or getting toasted with cheese, flatbreads are the unsung heroes of the sandwich universe.
The huarache is a long, flat oval of corn masa named for a sandal, dressed across its whole surface so the base is half the eating rather than a wrapper for the topping.
The huarache con suadero sets confited rose-colored beef on a sandal-shaped masa oval, a form Carmen Gómez Medina invented at a Mexico City canal stall in the early 1930s.
The huarache con bistec is the steak build of the sandal-shaped masa platform: thin beef seared fast and chopped small, pinned to a long bean-smeared oval of corn.
A gordita is a plump corn-masa round split along the edge into a hot pocket and filled; the older closed cousin of the tortilla, named for its thickness and made across central and northern Mexico.
Taco Bell's gordita; flatbread-like shell, different from traditional.
Split a gordita de horno warm and you get woodsmoke and toasted sugar, a crust colored against fire. The oven-baked masa round of Zacatecas and the Bajío, sweet with piloncillo or packed with beans.
The gordita de chicharrón fills the split masa pocket with pork crackling stewed soft in salsa, so a wet, gelatinous, porky core meets a firm warm corn shell that must hold it without dissolving.
The flauta is the long thin flute of the rolled-taco family: a corn tortilla wound tight, deep-fried rigid, and crowned with crema and salsa after the fry, longer and slimmer than the taquito.
Chicken flauta; shredded chicken rolled in tortilla, fried.
The US fish taco is a temperature clash held apart to the last second: hot battered fish, cold cabbage, cool lime crema. A 1960s Ensenada beach food brought north in 1983.
Refried beans glue a soft tortilla around a hard-shell taco, turning one fragile shell into a two-layer build that survives being carried. Launched 1995, permanent by 2006, cut in 2019, revived since.
Taco Bell's shell is dusted in real Doritos Nacho Cheese seasoning, licensed from Frito-Lay and engineered for years to survive frying, shipping, and a fold without losing crunch or dust.
Hard corn shell taco; U-shaped crispy fried corn tortilla, filled with ground beef, lettuce, cheese, tomato, sour cream. American inventi...
The Crunchwrap Supreme is a circle folded into a hexagon: six overlapping pleats sealed on a griddle, with a fried tostada disc inside acting as a dam between the hot layer and the cold one.
The American hard-shell taco traces to Lucia Rodriguez's Mitla Cafe, San Bernardino, 1937: ground beef, cheddar, iceberg, tomato in a fried shell. Glen Bell watched the lines and industrialized it.
Taco Bell's Cheesy Gordita Crunch wraps a soft flatbread around a crunchy beef taco and welds the two with melted three-cheese: soft, then crisp, then beef in a single bite.
One name, two unrelated fried builds: a shallow-fried Puebla masa antojito dressed hot with salsa, and Taco Bell's rigid deep-fried flatbread shell, launched in 1999 off Gordita dough.
Roasted cauliflower taco; vegetarian option.