A burrito, , is a type of Mexican food. It consists of a wheat flour tortilla wrapped or folded around a filling. The flour tortilla is usually lightly grilled or steamed, to soften it and make it more pliable. In Mexico, refried beans or meat are sometimes the only fillings. In the United States, however, fillings generally include a combination of ingredients such as Mexican rice, beans, lettuce, salsa, meat, avocado, cheese, and sour cream, and the size varies, with some burritos considerably larger than their Mexican counterparts.

History
Antecedents
Hand-held take-out foods like the burrito have a long history. Before the Spanish colonization of the Americas, indigenous peoples were eating hand-held snack foods like corn on the cob, popcorn and pemmican. In Mexico, the Spanish observed Aztecs selling take-out foods like tamales, tortillas, and sauces in open marketplaces. The Pueblo people of the desert Southwest also made tortillas with beans and meat sauce fillings prepared much like the modern burrito we know today 1]

Cuisine preceding the development of the modern taco, burrito, and enchilada was created by the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Aztec peoples of Mexico, who used tortillas to wrap foods, with fillings of chile sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, squash, and avocados. Spanish missionaries like Bernardino de Sahagún wrote about Aztec cuisine, describing the variety of tortillas and their preparation, notingthat the Aztecs not only used corn in their tortillas, but also squash and amaranth, and that some varieties used turkey, eggs, or honey as a flavoring.[2]
Development in Mexico
The word 'burrito' appears in the 1895 Diccionario de Mexicanismos, where it is identified as a regional term from Guanajuato and defined as 'Tortilla arrollada, con carne u otra cosa dentro, que en Yucatan llaman coçito,y en Cuernavaca y en Mexico, taco' (A rolled tortilla with meat or other ingredients inside, called 'coçito' in Yucatan and 'taco' in the city of Cuernavaca and in Mexico CIty).[3]
The word burrito means 'little donkey' in Spanish, coming from burro, which means 'donkey'. The name burrito possibly derives from the appearance of a rolled up wheat tortilla, which vaguely resembles the ear of its namesake animal, or from bedrolls and packs that donkeys carried.[4] Tradition tells the story of a man named Juan Mendez who used to sell tacos in a street stand, using a donkey as a transport for himself and the food, during the Mexican Revolution period (1910–1921) in the Bella Vista neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez.[citation needed] To keep the food warm, Mendez wrapped food in large home made flour tortillas inside individual napkins. He had a lot of success, and consumers came from other places around the Mexican border looking for the 'food of the burrito' (i.e., 'food of the little donkey'), the word they eventually adopted as thename for these large tacos.
Development in the United States
In 1923, Alejandro Borquez opened the Sonora cafe in Los Angeles, which later changed its name to the El Cholo Spanish Cafe 5] Burritos first appeared on American restaurant menus at the El Cholo Spanish Cafe during the 1930s.[6] Burritos were mentioned in the U.S. media for the first time in 1934,[7] appearing in the Mexican Cookbook, a collection of regional recipes from New Mexico authored by historian Erna Fergusson.[8]

Regional varieties
Mexico
Burritos are a traditional food of Ciudad Juarez, a city in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, where people buy them at restaurants and roadside stands. Northern Mexican border towns like Villa Ahumada have an established reputation for serving burritos. Authentic Mexican burritos are usually small and thin, with flour tortillas containing only one or two ingredients: some form of meat or fish, potatoes, rice, beans, asadero cheese, chile rajas, or chile relleno 9] Other types of ingredients may include barbacoa, mole, chopped hot dogs cooked in a tomato and chile sauce, refried beans and cheese, deshebrada, and (shredded slow-cooked flank steak). The deshebrada burrito also has a variation with chile colorado (mild to moderately hot) and salsa verde (very hot). The Mexican burrito may be a northern variation of the traditional taco de Canasta, which is eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.[citationneeded]
Although burritos are one of the most popular examples of Mexican cuisine outside of Mexico, in Mexico they are only popular in the northern part of the country. However, they are beginning to appear in some nontraditional venues in other parts of Mexico.
Wheat flour tortillas used in burritos are now often seen throughout much of Mexico (possibly due to these areas being less than optimal for growing maize), despite at one time being peculiar to northwestern Mexico, the Southwestern US Mexican American community, and Pueblo Indian tribes.
United States
See also: Cuisine of the United States
The most common style of the burrito in the United States is not as common in Mexico. Typically, American style burritos are larger than Mexican ones, and stuffed with more ingredients than the principal meat or vegetable filling. Pinto or black beans, rice (with cilantro and lime or Mexican style), guacamole, salsas, cheese, and sour cream are frequently added.
San Diego
The San Diego style of burrito has been described as 'austere' and 'simple'.[11][12] A carne asada burrito in San Diego, for example, can consist solely of chunks of carne asada and guacamole,[13] or carne asada, guacamole, and pico de gallo salsa,[14] without other ingredients such as rice and beans. One may also encounter non-traditional, 'healthy' burrito fillings such as eggplant 15]
Contents of a California Burrito from San Diego.
The Californiaburrito, a San Diego-area specialty,[16] consists of chunks of carne asada meat, French fries, cheese, and either pico de gallo, sour cream, or guacamole (or some combination of these three).[17][18] The ingredients are similar to those used in the carne asada fries dish, and it is considered a staple of the local cuisine of San Diego, California.[19] With its merging of French fries with more traditional burrito fillings, the California burrito is an example of fusion border food.[15] Although the California burrito originated in San Diego sometime in the 1980s, the first documentation of a burrito in its style can be found in a 1995 article in the Albuquerque Tribune.
San Francisco
Also called a Mission or Mission-style burrito, the typical San Francisco burrito is produced on a steam table assembly line, and is characterized by a large stuffed tortilla, wrapped in aluminum foil, which can include variations on different ingredients. The origins of the San Francisco burrito can be traced back to Mission District taquerias of the 1960s. Other theories state the original San Francisco burritos began with farm workers in the fields of the Central Valley 21] or with miners of the 19th century.[4] In 1961, Febronio Ontiveros began offering the first retail burrito in San Francisco at El Faro (The Lighthouse), a corner grocery store on Folsom Street. Ontiveros is credited with inventing the 'super burrito' styleleading to the early development of the 'San Francisco style'. This innovation involved adding rice, sour cream and guacamole to the standard meat, bean and cheese burrito. El Faro got its start when firemen from a nearby station requested sandwiches, which Ontiveros was unable to make. Instead, Ontiveros offered the firemen burritos. Large tortillas were unavailable in the early 1960s, so three six-inch tortillas were used to hold the filling. Ontiveros sold the burritos for one US dollar 21][22]
The San Francisco burrito emerged as a regional culinary movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The popularity of San Francisco-style burritos has grown locally, with Mission Street taquerias like El Farolito, and nationally with chains such as Moe's Southwest Grill, Chipotle Mexican Grill,[23] Illegal Pete's, Freebirds World Burrito, Qdoba, and Barberitos. In 1995, World Wrapps opened in San Francisco's Marina District, bringing a burrito-inspired sandwich wrap style to the restaurant industry.[24]
The breakfast burrito, a variety of American breakfast, is composed of breakfast items wrapped inside a flour tortilla. This style was invented and popularized in several different regional American cuisines, most notably New Mexican cuisine, Southwestern cuisine, and Tex-Mex. Southwestern breakfast burritos may include scrambled eggs, potatoes, onions, chorizo, guisado, or bacon.[25] Tia Sophia's, a Mexican café in Santa Fe, NewMexico, claims to have invented the original breakfast burrito in 1975, filling a rolled tortilla with bacon and potatoes, served wet with chili and cheese.[26] Fast food giant McDonald's introduced their version in the late 1980s, and by the 1990s, more fast food restaurants caught on to the style, with Taco Bell, Sonic, and Carl's Jr. offering breakfast burritos on their menus.

Wet burrito style
A wet (or enchilada style) burrito is smothered in a red chili sauce similar to enchilada sauce with melted shredded cheese on top. It is typically eaten off a plate with a fork and knife, rather than hand held.[27] When served in a Mexican restaurant in the U.S., a melted cheese covered burrito is typically called a burrito suizo (suizo meaning Swiss, an adjective used in Spanish to indicate dishes topped with cheese or cream).
Related foods
Steak burrito bowl
A burrito bowl is a burrito or fajita served without the tortilla, with the fillings placed in a bowl, with a layer of rice at the bottom. Its establishment can be traced to the beginning of the low carb fad in the early 2000s citation needed] It is not to be confused with a taco salad, which has a foundation of lettuce inside a fried tortilla. The burrito bowl is found in some form at many national Mexican food chain restaurants.
A chimichanga is a deep-fried burrito popular in Southwestern and Tex-Mex cuisines, and in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora 28]