Enter the soft shell taco you see below Sorry, we just need to make sure you’re not a robot. 001 Tacos de carnitas, carne asada y al pastor. Mexican dish consisting of a small hand-sized corn or wheat tortilla topped with a filling. The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand.
The origins of the taco are not precisely known, and etymologies for the culinary usage of the word are generally theoretical. According to one etymological theory, the culinary origin of the term “taco” in Mexico can be traced to its employment, among Mexican silver miners, as a term signifying “plug. The miners used explosive charges in plug form, consisting of a paper wrapper and gunpowder filling. One possibility is that the word derives from the Nahuatl word “tlahco”, meaning “half” or “in the middle,” in the sense that food would be placed in the middle of a tortilla. The taco predates the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico. There is anthropological evidence that the indigenous people living in the lake region of the Valley of Mexico traditionally ate tacos filled with small fish. Tacos al pastor made with adobada meat.
It is said that unless a taqueria offers tacos de lengua, it is not a real taqueria. The hard-shell or crispy taco is a tradition that developed in the United States. The most common type of taco in the US is the hard-shell, U-shaped version, first described in a cookbook in 1949. This type of taco is typically served as a crisp-fried corn tortilla filled with seasoned ground beef, cheese, lettuce, and sometimes tomato, onion, salsa, sour cream, and avocado or guacamole. Various sources credit different individuals with the invention of the hard-shell taco, but some form of the dish likely predates all of them. Beginning from the early part of the twentieth century, various types of tacos became popular in the country, especially in Texas and California but also elsewhere.