Tacos de canasta are a mainstay on the streets of Mexico City today,
but their history goes back thousands of years. Even if you’ve never had a “basket taco” (which,
spoiler alert, do not contain stewed wicker), you’ve probably enjoyed the street food explosion
they helped set off in the Western hemisphere. Hi, I’m Justin Dodd. Welcome to Food History. Who
were the first people to come up with the clever storage method that gave “tacos de canasta” their
name, and what role did they play in the birth of the taco? How do you define a taco, anyway?
Let's pull back the blue plastic bag of history and find out.
In 1948, Marcial Balderas left his home in the small farming village of San Vicente Xiloxochitla,
Mexico. He was only 14, but his timing was fortuitous. Mexico City (then known as the
Distrito Federal (or federal district), was poised to explode in population,
largely due to immigration from rural areas of the country. The capital city was also becoming one of
the world’s premiere street food destinations, a movement Balderas would soon help accelerate.
In Mexico City, Balderas met a woman named Cristina Mendoza who taught him a clever method
for making and transporting tacos. By stuffing tortillas with hot fillings and then meticulously
layering them into a napkin-lined basket, he could keep the tacos warm for hours. That let him haul
his wares all over town, seeking out customers, instead of waiting for them to find him. The
tortillas absorbed steam and oil without falling apart, earning them the name tacos sudados,
which literally translates to “sweated tacos.” Today, they’re more commonly known by the name
tacos de canasta, or “basket tacos.” Balderas did more than sell the street snack. He took
Mendoza’s method and shared it with other young entrepreneurs from his hometown moving to Mexico’s
capital. Some of these transplants took their recipes back to San Vicente, and the sleepy
agricultural village underwent a transformation. Seventy years later, both Mexico City and San
Vicente are famous for their hot, juicy tacos and the bike-riding vendors who commonly sell them.
Balderas was instrumental in shaping the taco de canasta business that serves Mexico City today,
but the tradition of piling steamy tacos into baskets predates him by decades.
Versions of tacos de canasta were served as far back as the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
which according to some historians, places them among the earliest tacos. But not everyone
agrees on tacos’ origin story. As I covered in our nachos episode, people in Mexico have been making
tortillas for thousands of years. Corn was first domesticated there around 7000 BCE,
and around 1500 BCE, Mesoamericans developed the process of soaking it in alkaline water known as
nixtamalization. In addition to becoming more nutritious and easier to digest,
corn soaked in a caustic solution can be ground into masa. This corn-based dough is used to
make a number of Mexican staples—perhaps the most famous being the tortilla.
According to Merriam-Webster, a taco consists of a tortilla that’s been
“folded or rolled and stuffed with a mixture.” Based on this definition,
the first tacos likely appeared shortly after the first tortilla. Around Aztec tables,
tortillas were used like spoons to scoop up ingredients such as squash, meat,
and beans. Hot chili sauce may have been added to the bundle, but it would have lacked alliums
like onions and garlic which only grew across the Atlantic Ocean prior to the Columbian exchange.
“Folded tortillas stuffed with a mixture” have a long history, but that doesn’t satisfy everyone’s
definition of a taco. Is it still a taco if you use the tortilla to pick up ingredients
one bite at a time, or do the components need to be assembled on a plate? Is there a minimum
tortilla-to-filling ratio requirement? Does eating chana masala inside a piece of naan make it a
taco? What about a piece of breakfast sausage in a corn pancake? Is a Pop-Tart technically
a calzone? I can see we’re rapidly approaching “is a hotdog a sandwich?” territory, so let’s
save this discussion for our future episode on culinary ontology in a postmodern multiverse.
I know—sometimes we can’t resist a little clickbait…
The origins of the word taco are a bit easier to pin down. The term originally meant “plug”
or “wad” in Spanish, and it was used by miners to describe the gunpowder-filled parcels they
would stuff into rock faces to excavate precious ores. Silver was Mexico’s top export for most of
the 19th century, and the workers who mined it needed quick, satisfying meals they could
eat on the job. A hearty stewed filling—or guisado—tucked into a tortilla ticked these
boxes. It’s easy to see why these snacks reminded miners of their own explosive
tacos—especially if they had a spicy kick to them. Instead of paper wrapped around gunpowder,
these edible tacos consisted of tortillas wrapped around savory fillings. There’s evidence that the
term taco was already in use as a generic name for any kind of snack, which may have expedited its
adoption as a label for this more specific dish. Tacos mineros, as they’re now known, had to travel
well, so miners stacked them and wrapped them tightly with napkins to keep them warm. That
means the first tacos to bear the name taco likely bore a strong resemblance to tacos de canasta,
even if they were consumed in fields and mines instead of on city street corners.
It didn’t take long for basket tacos to infiltrate urban environments. The decades after independence
were difficult times for Mexico’s mining industry, and when miners moved to the capital seeking jobs,
they likely introduced tacos mineros to their new home. Like the original version of the dish,
Mexico City’s first tacos would have been pre-assembled and served out of baskets,
appealing to working-class citizens on the go. One of the earliest known photos featuring tacos
proves that tacos de canasta have a long history in the city. Taken around 1920,
it shows a female street vendor standing next to a basket of tacos wrapped in napkins as hungry
paperboys from the area gather to dig in. Street tacos were present in Mexico City
throughout the early 20th century, but the young businessman Marcial Balderas changed the scene.
His hometown of San Vicente Xiloxochitla is known as la cuna, or “the cradle,” of tacos
de canasta. By sharing his trade secrets with other San Vicente natives, he helped establish
a long tradition of taqueros assembling their tacos in the village every morning,
transporting them to Mexico City, and selling them to the city’s hungry working folks. Though some
vendors have made their permanent homes in the city, many are willing to commute up to two hours,
even if it means wrangling their bikes and taco baskets onto buses. It’s estimated that 80 percent
of the town’s population works in the basket taco business today, whether they’re selling the
finished dish, cooking the savory stews that fill them, or producing the tortillas themselves.
The guisados used to make tacos de canasta vary, but customers usually have their choice
of four classic fillings: adobo, chicharrón, beans, and potatoes—with or without meat.
We got a chance to sit down with a taquero in Mexico City to hear
about this delicious piece of history firsthand.
Nosotros empezamos a hacer los guisados a las 5:00 AM.
Mucha gente si no hay chicharrón no comen, se van.
Just as important as what goes inside the tacos is how they’re packaged. When a layer of tacos is
added to the basket, they’re ladled with the hot oil that’s left over from making the adobo stew.
This keeps them warm and moist even through hours of travel. Mobile taqueros know how to
pack a container with as much food as possible while leaving channels for the fat to drain.
After some complex arranging, they’ll have a basket filled with 200 to 500 tacos.
Baskets are lined with plastic bags and covered with cloth or paper to keep the heat locked
inside. The liners tend to be blue, and they’re often the first thing customers spot from across
the street. It’s unclear why that color was originally chosen. According to one theory,
cooks liked the color blue because it kept flies away. The thinking went that because blue so
rarely appears in nature, pests aren’t interested in it. Unfortunately for street food vendors,
this assumption may be backwards. Researchers at the University of Florida found that flies
are actually three times *more* attracted to blue objects than they are to yellow ones. A
less fanciful explanation is that the blue plastic may just have been affordable and
readily available. Either way, the color has become part of the tacos’ brand today.
With no need for on-the-spot cooking equipment, many taqueros are able to sell their products
from the backs of bicycles. In addition to a hefty basket, bikes are typically equipped with
jars of condiments like pickled chilies and salsa. The low overhead also allows vendors
to sell their goods at an affordable price. It’s easy to find a taco de canasta in Mexico
City for 10 pesos, or around 50 cents in U.S. dollars—sometimes even cheaper.
Nowadays, tacos de canasta can be found not just on the street,
but in brick-and-mortar establishments.
Empezamos en una bicicleta, como todos los clásicos tradicionales,
hasta que pudimos agarrar un local era tanta la clientela.
La gente prefiere luego a veces afuera, se nos junta la gente afuera.
Basket tacos may have moved out of the mine shafts, but their role as a cheap,
fast, and satisfying meal for working-class people hasn’t changed much over the years.
Drop your favorite taco in the comments below. Maybe we’ll make a future episode of Food History
about it—or, at minimum, order some for dinner tonight. Please, I am constantly plagued by
decision paralysis and I could really use some suggestions. I’m so hungry. Thanks for watching.