Engineering students create edible adhesive tape to keep burrito wrapped tightly | Hacker News Reader

Engineering students create edible adhesive tape to keep burrito wrapped tightly

boingboing.net

260 pointszdw210 comments

A young girl created "Edible Taco Tape" over 20 years ago. Her invention was featured on the Nickelodeon show Figure It Out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLFjuVyP_n0

A burrito is just a rolled up large Taco. Bring downvotes.

You understand neither burritos nor tacos.

Go ahead. Explain yourself.

A taco is a small, to be held in the hand, street food predating the Spanish empire in southern Mexico and central america (Parker, 2006). It is composed of a small amount of meat or fish on a corn flatbread, usually with some amount of pico de gallo or salsa, and often with lime over it. Some key elements is that its a 'single ingredient' dish, it be hand held, and it be served fresh (traditionally as street food). Carne asada, al pastor, fried fish, etc. represent reasonable taco fillings and are not 'combined' with other, filler type ingredients, like beans or rice. There is another mexican dish, the tostada which incorporates those ingredients. A tostada is not a taco. A taco needs to be able to be picked up and eaten with one hand. That means it can not be over filled and it shouldn't be. If you want more food, order more tacos.

A burrito is as well a single ingredient food (read: no fillers like beans and rice unless that is specifically the single ingredient in the burrito). The primary difference is that a burrito is usually on flour tortillas and is wrapped to be held with two hands, often having substantially more content than a taco, which is specifically intended to be eaten with one hand.

The biggest criticism I'm raising is the American (outside of border states like CA, AZ, NM, and TX where they don't put up with that shit) tendency to accept cheaper, filler ingredients as primary to the contents of a burrito. This is a serious departure, where in border states and mexico, burritos might come with rice and beans on the side, they are never substituted as primary ingredients.

The broadest point is that there are many many ways of combining some filling, tortillas, and other ingredients. Just because it has those components does not a taco or burrito make.

Parker, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20080502160526/http://www.iccjou...

Holyshit, I concede! This is peak HN :-). Thanks for the lesson honestly.

This is a great description for the original, most pure definition of taco. However, people interpret foods differently over time and space (just look at what "pizza" has meant for different areas over time), and, in my opinion, this evolution is natural and shouldn't be looked down upon.

The pure definition, though, is still the common definition in most of Central America and in Latino communities. Feels odd to erase that correct, active definition because it was used for marketing unrelated things in unrelated places

Let me know once people in the US stop referring to meat-filled pastry as "koláče". I was horrified to find out about that. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that one either.

The only place I've seen kolatches (sp.) was fifty years ago in the little town of West, TX (and it's not really in West Texas, but more in between Fort Worth and Austin.) Those were pastries filled with various delicious things, including sausage and fruit.) I don't think I've ever seen kolatches anywhere else. I'd love to find more, and learn the difference. They are far from common in the USA sadly.

I'm not sure I could tell you anything more than Wikipedia can already tell you in my stead. Sausages simply have nothing to do with koláče; koláče are basically sweets. You wouldn't put a sausage in a cake either, I'm sure.

I sure as heck would put a sausage in a cake, and I do so frequently. It’s delicious, and it’s called “Pigs in a Blanket.”

https://reluctantentertainer.com/buttermilk-pancake-pigs-in-...

Isn't that massively stretching the definition of a "cake"? When I wrote "cake", I meant this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cake#/media/File:Pound_layer_c... -- do you put a sausage in those?

These all sound awesome, I think I will have to make one of them this weekend. The "Old Time Pork Cake" is calling to me.

https://www.texascooking.com/recipes/sausage-bundt-cake.htm

https://newfoundland.ws/christmas-old-time-pork-cake-recipe/

https://eatwithjean.com/pork-floss-roll-cake/

They can be found quite easily in Austin and New Orleans.

Never heard of 'em. Is it like a pasty?

It's supposed to look like this https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kol%C3%A1%C4%8D#/media/Soubor:... , but apparently in the US, some people put meat in them, when they're actually supposed to be filled with prune plum spread ("povidla") or some other fruit filling, poppy seed filling, or quark.

Pasty - a term I did expect to see on HN.

Referring to the Finnish variety or other ?

Yep, I have a lot of family in Copper Country.

Let me know once people in the US stop referring to meat-filled pastry as "koláče".

Kolaches mean different things in different parts of the U.S.

In Chicago, they're often filled with sweet things, and sold by mom-and-pop shops and bakeries.

In Houston, they're mainly for breakfast, with things like eggs, bacon, sausage, brisket, etc. and sold by chains like Shipley's and Kolache Factory: https://kolachefactory.com

Recently, the Houston version of kolaches has made inroads into Chicago: https://www.howdykolache.com

Yeah, and eggs, bacons, sausages, and briskets have no business being in a sweet dish such as koláč (which looks like this: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kol%C3%A1%C4%8D#/media/Soubor:...).

That looks like a topless paczki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pączki

Paczki Day is almost as big a holiday in Chicago as Casimir Pulaski Day.

If pączki are anything like Czech koblihy (to which they bear an uncanny resemblance -- cf. https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobliha#/media/Soubor:Picswiss...), then their dough is must be very different from dough for koláče.

> Feels odd to erase that correct, active definition

I think this is because Americans feel big-brotherly protective (in a creepy way) about their Latin American communities.

Altered versions of e.g. Italian food (e.g. pasta carbonara with cream, deep dish pizza, submarine sandwiches, chicken parmesan), Japanese food (California roll, Philadelphia roll), Chinese food (fortune cookies, General Tso's chicken, beef and broccoli) don't cause similar reactions.

> Altered versions of e.g. Italian food (e.g. pasta carbonara with cream, deep dish pizza, submarine sandwiches, chicken parmesan) ... don't cause similar reactions.

Like hell they don't! Most of your examples are just ignorable new inventions, but the reinterpretation of spaghetti carbonara (not pasta carbonara, you heathen) as a shitty cream sauce? I'll go to the mat to decry that horrendously disgusting perversion.

Anyone that prefers that hot mess probably also puts ranch dressing on everything, including pizza, and thinks Velveeta "queso" is delicious.

Americans celebrated a fast food chain bringing back Mexican pizza recently. Other Americans never miss a chance to declare sushi rolls aren't proper sushi.

On the other hand, having lived in Mexico for almost a decade now, these explanations tend to merely be nothing but the unholy combo of pedantry + incorrect, with a big component that smells a lot like "I just traveled to exotic lands and I will tell you how those people eat" or "I had a taco during my layover in <some Mexican city> and can tell you what all tacos are".

Because the reality is that you can find tacos and food items of many variations in Mexico (or wherever) that the people there will call a taco, and they'll do it without any of the sort of snobbery you find in these comments.

Like, tacos are a single ingredient food item? Then why can I find people slopping on any number of side items down the street in Guadalajara? And it's still labeled a taco? They really need to read HN and become illuminated. They're wrong.

Frankly, the idea that Mexican cuisine (or whichever cuisine) was frozen in some snapshot back in history—and anything they do eat since then is "incorrect"—does more to erase reality than pointing out that maybe the cuisine is much more varied than someone on HN thinks.

And all of this is said before even getting into regional variations like what happens to cuisines once they cross borders into different cultures. Americans eat hard-shell tacos? It's a lot more interesting to me to explore why that is than to roll our eyes at how people are ugh doing it wrong. Maybe artifacts of one culture changing when they enter other cultures is the beauty of culture rather something that needs to be corrected.

Your argument is based on a prescriptive definition of “burrito” which does not match how the vast majority of English speakers use it. I can make any arbitrary taxonomy work by simply redefining the terms in a restrictive way, but in doing so, nothing is accomplished. It’s a form of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, in this case no true burrito.

Then we must decide whether it is the English-speaking or Mexican Spanish meaning of the word 'burrito' that we are even discussing. If we want to be accurate, we should define our goals in a specific way, which hasn't been done here.

There are borrowed words in English where the meaning in the borrowing language is different than in the original (source) language. There are even terms, such as this one in Te Ao Maori, 'Takatāpui', where the meaning is intentionally different depending on whether the speaker is speaking Te Ao Maori or English, because of careful and intentional distinctions about preserving the meanings of words[1].

Things can get even more complicated when we attempt to remove our native language as a default frame-of-reference, such as attempting to determine what exactly is correct (or not, and if not, how) in the following conversation:

> Q: "What does 'sushi' mean?"

> A: "It's Japanese for 'burrito'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takatāpui

"Burrito" is not a word of English origin...

From one taco elitist to another, thank you.

Who else survived from starving in college thanks to Taco Tuesdays? The trick was to make two tacos from one because it was always served with two layers of the flatbread. The flatbread was sometimes corn, sometimes flour, but it was always generously served double layers.

Curious which is the traditional, the soft taco or the hard shell we know of from that franchise with a bell?

Its not supposed to be flatbread though, its a tortilla

Wouldn't you place tortilla in the general flatbread category? Every culture has a flatbread.

I guess now that I looked it up. Wikipedia calls it a flatbread but it has more in common with a biscuit since its unleavened and usually made with lard…

think of leavening (either via yeast or chemical means) and lard as just extra feature bits in the larger flatbread space.

We need to hang out in the park next to a taco truck and hash this out. The least convincing buys a round for all.

> Every culture has a flatbread.

They do? Bread in any form is not a major element of every culture. The Hawaiian equivalent seems to have been poi, which isn't even solid.

Native Hawaiians had breadfruit.

A Navajo friend of mine made amazing flatbread. They call it Fry Bread. Tastes wonderful.

I'm always looking for counterexamples of my claim.

The obvious places to look are Polynesia (as mentioned), Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa. What are the indigenous flatbreads?

Following up in another way, Eskimo culture can be safely assumed to lack flatbread since the diet lacked pretty much any plant-based element. Any other non-agricultural cultures, like pygmies, would also lack the ability to produce bread. (Not to say they don't eat it today; pygmies are commercially entwined with the settled people around them.)

I wouldn't even place it in bread category. Is a pie crust in a pie also flatbread?

historically, tacos were made soft (tortillas) but the tortilla can also be toasted to make it crispy. The taco is definitely one of the "truly from the old world, thing that people ate 4,000 years ago that is not too dissimilar to what you can get from a taco truck today"

> A burrito is as well a single ingredient food

No they're not.

> The biggest criticism I'm raising is the American (outside of border states like CA, AZ, NM, and TX where they don't put up with that shit) tendency to accept cheaper, filler ingredients as primary to the contents of a burrito.

Having lived in San Diego and SF… they do indeed put up with that shit in many parts of those border states.

Fantastic comment, though. :)

What exactly is a "single ingredient dish" to you? This "Pico de gallo" thing already consists of multiple ingredients -- or so Wikipedia tells me. So does salsa, if I understand it correctly. Your notion of "single ingredient" must be different from mine.

I assume they mean typically a single protein.

That burrito definition excludes the Mission burrito, a grievous error.

Think of it like a feature in machine learning- there are many burritos, some of which have the "rice inside" bit and the "beans inside" bits set to one. Burritos themselves exist within wrappspace (https://worldwrapps.com/) which themselves are within the "self-contained food manifold".

I generally agree with most of your assessments and classifications, but: I can definitely eat a tostada with one hand (if it's crispy). To me, a taco is a folded tostada (when I worked at a mexican restaurant, we also had a bowl-shaped tostada ("salad in a bread bowl"). To me, that is a continuum. The ingredients are a bit less important (my preference is al pastor on a steamed soft corn tortilla).

The moment you "wrap" (fully enclose in a tubular way), I think it moves to a different part of the embedded space which includes all wraps (https://worldwrapps.com/). The mission-style burrito definitely has the "rice and beans inside" in addition to the primary (meat, veggie, whatever), this sounds very much like the "in Texas, chili doesn't have beans" argument.

The ‘No true burrito’ argument.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

I've enjoyed many good breakfast burritos in Austin but won't oder them most places because, as you say, they tend to be stuffed with filler. Tacos can suffer from this too--I'm sure there must be some pork under all this cabbage--but you can usually get rid of some of the filler and there's not as much room to stuff a lot of it in anyway.

But rice and beans taste good. Even rice and beans alone is really tasty. Wrap it up in a tortilla with hot sauce and sour cream.. delicious! The meat sweetens the deal, but I can easily enjoy a burrito with no meat.

Whether you call that a burrito or make up some other word for it makes little difference, it is what it is, and it tastes damn good. It tastes great whether you call it a burrito or a 'rice-and-beans wrap with pork'.

By this definition, eating a slice of New York Style pizza topped with pepperoni in the traditional way (folded in half, standing outside) is a taco. Which is patently absurd.

How 'bout this definition: I'll eat whatever I want, call it whatever I want, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, because this isn't France and you're never gonna get a law passed on it. As they say in various kink communities, "don't yuck my yum".

Heretic! To the fires with you! A taco uses tortillas...

I actually hate New York Style pizza, and one of the reasons is the crust is so thin and flat.

The other reason being you have to subject yourself to going to New York to get it, and nobody should have to do that to themselves.

> As they say in various kink communities, "don't yuck my yum".

This is a disturbing way to put it, because I learned that phrase from my kids' preschool. :D

What is the grain of that burrito wrapper?

If it's wheat, that's from German immigrants into what became Texas.

Aren’t tacos very different things in different places? You and the person you answer to may be talking past each other if you have a different idea of what a tacos is in your mind.

Just for the anecdote, I’m back from France and tacos there are a weird sandwich. But I’ve always seen them made using a hard-shell made of corn, that breaks way too easy. And I believe that’s considered heretic in the US, so I’m not even sure what you would expect an actual tacos to be!

>But I’ve always seen them made using a hard-shell made of corn, that breaks way too easy. And I believe that’s considered heretic in the US

Certainly not heretic. You'll find hard-shell corn tacos in pretty much any US grocery store. They do break easily but they're what I would tend to use for a taco with ground beef. Otherwise, I'd usually use soft corn.

I usually get two, break them up and make a taco salad, much easier to eat and less likely to ruin a shirt. If I can't set up that situation I get the soft tacos.

Oh that's an interesting idea. Never heard of a taco salad.

In America, hard-shell tacos are simultaneously heretical and popular. It's polarizing, like pineapples on pizza.

Marmite is polarising, you can legitimately like or dislike it. What you're suggesting is inflammatory legitimisation of an abhorrent practice.

Marmite hard shelled tacos, with shrimp

And pineapple?

and nutella

and ketchup

And some dental floss for after!

This works, I might add watercress.

Prawns*

Honestly the disdain for them is a _little_ silly when they're not that different from a tostada (in fact, Taco Bell, in their failed foray into Mexico, called their tacos "Tacostadas" to give Mexican customers the idea).

What kind of taco do you picture when you think of a hard-shelled taco?

I picture American tacos (which are not good tacos, though I wouldn’t say I “disdain” them per se).

Oh well ground beef with “taco seasoning” is not necessarily that compelling. But the concept of a hard shell for tacos itself seems not that different from the impulse behind tostadas (or taquitos or flautas).

> in their failed foray into Mexico

Really, they actually tried this? What were they thinking??

It's not really "Mexican food" and they weren't trying to get in that lane but to be something different. It's not that crazy. Panda Express has been somewhat successful in Asia.

hard shell tacos are easy to find in the southwest and much different to what taco bell might serve. They are just fried corn tortillas folded. That was the original inspiration of to crunchy taco, execution just got iffy as they scaled up.

I've never had a taco with beans & rice, but I guess that could be a thing.

No. It isnt.

That's a tostada. There are words for these things. A tostada is made and served completely differently.

Second, beans and rice have no place in a burrito and Americans who accept this from their burrito manufacturers have been being scammed for decades.

I mean, if we’re really going down this line of pedantry, it seems prudent to point out that burritos were first created in the United States, so that would indeed be authentic.

That would be some bad pedantry since the origin of the burrito is complicated and not nearly as clear as you suggest, the best bets place it's origin in an area currently split by the US-Mexico border.

You might be thinking of the hardshell taco, which is a US invention.

Burritos are highly regional and come in many different forms. There is no *one true burrito" and anybody to tries to argue there is is trying to elevate one region's definition over the others.

Arguably, tostadas are defined more by the form of the flat, crispy torilla than by what you out on top of it.

Beans and/or rice presence in a burrito is a regional distinction. Personally, I don't like the all meat burritos that are standard in many areas.

And once you travel beyond mexico you will realize there is a whole range of food that overlaps with those categories. Is a baleada a burrito, a taco, or it's own separate thing?

A “wrap” is the generic term for food wrapped in something vaguely large-tortilla-like. Just because people somewhere call something a burrito doesn’t make it true.

You are just flat wrong here. The world clearly agrees that burritos can have beans and pizza can have pineapples. If you try to limit the meaning of "burrito" you are simply not accurately conveying what the word means. In addition "traditional burritos" have long included a wide variety of ingredients, including beans, though usually not with as many ingredients per burrito as a "mission burrito".

> Burritos are highly regional and come in many different forms. There is no *one true burrito" and anybody to tries to argue there is is trying to elevate one region's definition over the others.

You're not kidding, I'm from SoCal and we have the largest Mexican population due to proximity and I grew up going to Baja for cheap weekends with my family and got to eat lots of Mexican food--it wasn't really my thing, and I do not like corn in general, but once in a while was fine.

So, I thought I had a solid idea of what Mexican food was, and being from SoCal it's not uncommon to see things like fries inside of a burrito as the most 'white-people' option, which oddly I'm a fan of especially hashbrowns.

Then I moved to Colorado and realized that what I had been eating was strictly localized to the Pacific side of Mexico, all the stuff I saw that was called Mexican was like nothing I had ever seen before. Recently I went back after leaving Boulder and I ordered a burrito not thinking much about it when I visited a friend and he chose a spot nearby to meet up for drinks. I totally forgot that the Mexican population in Colorado is mainly from the border with Texas and some from the Gulf area so what came back was this monster drenched in sauce.

I asked if they messed up my order, but he said that all burritos come like that unless specified otherwise, which apparently is quite common in the Mid-west--this is contentious but I think CO is definitely the mid-west and it's culture reflects that as I mainly lived in SoCal, Colorado and Hawaii when I've lived in the US.

Honestly, it was like a big enchilada, which I could only stomach 1/2 of as it was way too much for my palette.

I think a gyros and kabab resembles a burrito the most to anything else, both which I enjoy way more as their is a greater emphasis on lots of pickled things with intriguing sauces--a garlic-heavy tzatziki makes everything taste better.

But honestly the thing is it's a staple found in just about any culture and cuisine: meat and veg wrapped in wheat based outer layer.

I think people can make whatever concoction they want...Vegetarian tacos often have rice and beans. You are free to declare your regional definition of taco/tostadas the only true religion, but that won't make it true :) .

Yes, besides that, it’s essentially the same thing.

Rice and beans are served on the side with Tacos.

If you’ve worked in a Taco truck, you’d know that it’s exactly the same ingredients going into both. Your spoon goes into the same buckets. Meat is grilled in the same way. Tacos may have corn tortilla or flour, we can quibble about that.

> If you’ve worked in a Taco truck, you’d know that it’s exactly the same ingredients going into both. Your spoon goes into the same buckets. Meat is grilled in the same way. Tacos may have corn tortilla or flour, we can quibble about that.

Pfft, Roy Choi flipped the taco game: corn vs flour is less interesting than kimchi or oi muchim inside of a taco. Honestly, I think both are amazing and Korean and Mexican food match so well. It's definitely a uniquely SoCal thing, but to be honest after having Kogi I can't eat tacos without Korean based ingredient and enjoy it anymore.

Wait.

How is the the corn in a corn tortilla not flour? If the corn (which might be maize) is milled then it has become flour. Maybe instead of flour you meant wheat.

Corn flour means fine milled maize. Coarse milled maize is called corn meal. Wheat flour tortillas are called flour tortillas.

An entry in the Diccionario de Mexicanismos says that a food item called a burrito, consisting of a rolled tortilla filled with meat and other ingredients, was popular in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. The same food was eaten in areas like Yucatan and Mexico City, where it was known as a cocito and taco, respectively.

https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2018/04/history-origin-bu...

I will never downvote food taxonomy hot takes, no matter how wrong they are.

Watch the Taco Chronicles on Netflix then reconsider your life choices.

Agree but it’s worth noting that Taco Chronicles did do a very generous episode on American tacos.

A taco is type 3 - taco. A Burrito is type 6 - Calzone.

This is all clearly laid out here: https://cuberule.com

"Language is use, nerds."

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/268

Thank you. That was excellent!

I want to be clear: Both the logical structure (let's decide which things are sandwiches using these rules) and its negation (no, it's a sandwich only because people say it's a sandwich) are great, and both are good lessons. I upvoted both :D

We would all do well to be able to apply this same thinking, and not just to classifying a burrito.

That was wonderful, thank you

I found it here, and am happy to bring a smile to your face by bringing it back up for anyone who missed it :-)

You made my day, thanks bro

Interesting. The cheesecake here is nothing like ones found in the UK, which would be classified as toast!

According to that, a Big Mac is a cake, because it has a layer of bread in between.

A sandwich to me is a meal you can 1) hold with your hands, 2) enjoy while gambling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sand...

i wanted for you to help me figure out the classic "is a hotdog a sandwich?" but against my best judgement I visited the page first :)

The cube rule was made by a chaotic neutral, only explanation.

The Cube Rule (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30793622 - March 2022 (136 comments)

The Cube Rule of Food Identification (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18658684 - Dec 2018 (183 comments)

I too enjoy trolling on HN.

Came here to post this on reading the title. I remember this episode vividly

And a patent application from 2009 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100272864A1/en . Maybe abandoned because of prior art?

I remember reading about it in a book called "More Future Stuff" from 1991. Even the Amazon blurb mentions it:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0140145230/ref=dbs_a_def_rw...

"...edible food tape (to hold together those messy meals like burritos)..."

A properly wrapped burrito doesn't need edible adhesive tape.

Edit: Also, does the photo of the tape look a little like mold?

So? Evidently people who properly wrap their tacos "all the time, every time", aren't the target of such an invention.

Once you learn how to do it it’s very easy, and even helps spread the burrito contents along the inside.

People really should just learn to wrap their burritos it’s fun and the dense bottom park provides a wonderful texture.

But I assume this invention lets you make much larger burritos for the same size tortilla, which is pretty cool.

Ah, indeed. I am a fan of larger burritos.

They are targets. You need to think ahead. Learned knowledge is used space. By replacing knowledge with tape you have effectively eliminated millions of gigabytes of memory wasted by thousands of burrito wrappers across the world holding this useless knowledge in their heads.

While current knowledge can't be unlearned the skill of proper burrito wrapping is similar to the skill of dialing a rotary phone or using manual gear shift in a car. The future of burrito wrapping is via tape. You sound like my grandpa telling me how he walked 10 feet to school everyday instead of riding a Segway.

> using manual gear shift in a car.

Which is useful everywhere but suburbia which is why it's still popular and mandatory in driver's education in Europe?

But not popular anywhere in the US whether it's suburbia or not. Japan still uses Fax machines the same way Europe still uses manual.

The US was behind the rest of the world with chip-n-pin by nearly two decades. That has nothing to do with it. The fact is manual can do things that automatic can't and it's just dangerous to have the latter in some situations.

Japan is behind on fax machines. The US was behind on chip-n-pin. Isn't that evidence for the possibility that manual is also a sort of hold back? I don't see how the chip-n-pin example helps your thesis.

Anyway these are my overall thoughts on manual: https://www.cars.com/articles/why-manual-transmissions-are-d...

Also, In what situation is manual safer then automatic?

The first one? It's colored with dye to be visible, the second one is what the actual tape would look like.

Normally when asking for a burrito you tell them the toppings one by one, never all at once. Withholding information is the best way to get an overstuffed burrito and your money's worth.

They're hard to wrap properly, so tape might help.

Double wrap is the key

this guy chipotles

If you are referring to Chipotle as your northstar for what a burrito is, I'm sorry but I'm not sure you are qualified to weigh in on burrito construction?

Chipotle is to burritos as Little Caesars is to pizza. I mean technically maybe(?), but whats the point?

> "Chipotle is to burritos as Little Caesars is to pizza."

yah, the best burritos and tacos are from a street cart on the corner or a little hut restaurant, otherwise it's probably manufactured food, no matter what the brand tries to sell you, since the overhead costs (rent, especially) drown out all the other concerns like taste.

i personally wouldn't want this tape on my burrito, because i tear off all the excess tortilla to get a better yumminess ratio.

I've noticed some variation between locations, but when it's good it's great. It's all fresh, well-seasoned, high quality ingredients. How is it anything comparable to the cheapest pizza you can buy? Maybe Taco Bell but definitely not Chipotle.

Pizza is like sex - even when it's bad, its good.

So, are burritos the same way?

This is why I prefer ordering with the app, they see the whole list of what you want and don't have to go through the mental effort of wondering how much of what to use as they don't know how many stuffings you want.

The whole point is to get them to overstuff it though. That's why you make it seem at first like you're not going to want much but then you ask for everything you can possibly get, one by one.

"A bowl"

"White rice"

"Black beans"

"Oh yeah, some veggies too"

"Actually maybe let's add some sofritas to that"

etc.

That said -- I usually go with a bowl instead of burrito, makes their life and my life easier

Depending on user (the burrito maker) to perform correctly is a major engineering mistake

by that definition, everything is a mistake

burrito is just the word for doing it correctly.

Certain shops I go to consistently do it right. Chipotle does it consistently badly. They might have high turnover due to poor working conditions and can't keep up with training people to do it well. So they'd benefit from this kind of aid.

For those curious what a properly wrapped burrito is like: I was taught to do it as follows (worked at a burrito joint, not Chipotle):

- Lay out your tortilla flat with all ingredients on top. Try not to overstuff for the first time you try this because getting it right takes a bit of practice

- Place the tortilla in front of you, ideally positioning the ingredients in a line running perpendicular to your field of vision (straight ahead).

- Take each hand, make the "sign of the horns"[0], except stick your thumb out instead of placing it against your fingers like in the article.

- Gently fold inward the left and right sides of the tortilla about 1 inch/2.5cm (this is slightly variable depending on tortilla size and ingredient stuffing, but a good rule of thumb) using your horn fingers and slide your thumbs under the area of the tortilla closest to you.

- Use your thumbs to push up and roll the tortilla away from you, trying to position the edge being rolled such that it grabs all of the ingredients when you close the burrito. Keep your horn fingers in the tortilla during this step and roll as tightly as possible.

- Once you have rolled the tortilla such that it covers all ingredients, push the top of the tortilla back towards you as tightly as you can before removing your horn fingers and then use your hands to finish tucking and wrapping as tightly as possible.

If done correctly, you should have a wrapped burrito that can be held and eaten without any sort of wrapping or worry about ingredients falling out from either side.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_of_the_horns

Do you have a video of this being executed as described? I lack burrito shells and filling, and am having a hard time following your description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlirQ2SeGTw and many others.

The key is to not overfill the damned tortilla. The top and bottom "flaps" should be able to fold down to the middle of the ingredients. If they can't at least fold down that far your burrito will deconstruct itself mid-meal. I like to create a polar burrito where the bottom flap reaches past the ingredient center to give more surface to attach to the side flaps. I'm ok if the top flap isn't super secure as it's eaten in the first two bites.

An inedible wrap should not be the only thing keeping the burrito together. Biting the burrito will cause it to leak inside that wrap then it makes a mess. Overstuffing a burrito might give you more food but at the expense of the burrito being an entirely self contained unit of perfection.

Also if you've got store bought tortillas stick a damp paper towel between them and microwave them for 10-20 seconds on a plate. You'll get a partial steam and they'll be more pliable and you'll get an easier wrapping experience and a superior burrito over a tortilla fresh out of the package.

Concur:

- Absolutely have to nuke the tortilla or it won’t flex. 45 seconds with the cheese (UK grated 4-cheese blend from As/co works great) until it just goes melty. Have the fillings ready and work fast, it stiffens right up.

- Don’t overstuff. UK “white wraps” are too damn small :|

The steamers they use at burrito shops make the flour tortillas soft and flexible so they can wrap, fold, & stretch without breaking, and the steam moistened flour sticks to itself better when wrapped.

Steamers are well and good but not typically found in people's kitchens. Microwaving pre-packaged tortillas is an easy way to make them burrito-capable. Even "good" packaged tortillas benefit from the microwave treatment.

My home method: keep a spray bottle handy or, in a pinch, dribble some water along the edge of the tortilla while it’s in the pan. Can get a very tight seal if you then roll it over or spread with a spoon/spatula.

I'll have to try out a spray bottle. I usually go for the microwave because I usually am scooping the meat out of the pan I cooked it in. I microwave the tortillas on a plate I'm eventually using to serve them. Everywhere I've lived saved my current house has had cramped kitchens so I'm used to a cramped meal prep area. I optimize for fewer dishes as I've never had the room and I hate doing dishes post-meal anyways.

I'm curious to try the spray bottle as I'm sure it'll do a better job steaming tortillas than my microwave technique.

With a small tortilla you can eschew structural purity and leave the top of the burrito open. In such cases if the bottom flap can fold up 1/3rd the way from the bottom on the ingredients you're probably good. Then wrap the sides in tightly and plate with the solid "back" of the burrito down. It'll last long enough to serve without the contents spilling. If wrapped well enough you can still eat it with one hand.

This was invented by university students, who are known to fill burritos past theoretical limits

These are the keys. You need a larger tortilla and or a lower amount of filling than you probably realize.

Also, after you build that burrito, you can optionally toast it in a pan with some oil to get the exterior crispy and rigid.

It does look like mold with the added dye. I'm sure they were more concerned with the technical feasibility of using it with food safe dye than how it looked— which is fine. That's what engineers do.

But that's why culinary school curriculums are a combination of art school and a trade school rather than a branch of applied chemistry, and why industrial food manufacturers employ chefs in test kitchens rather than having food scientists do it all. Aesthetics aren't a technical problem to be overcome— it's an entirely different mode of reasoning about something. Deep understanding of the underlying mechanics isn't required— it might actually be a hinderance. I'll bet doctors have an exceptionally hard time with life drawing, for example.

That requires me to learn a skill though (burrito wrapping).

I imagine university dining halls often aren't "properly" wrapping their burritos and may be part of the motivation behind this invention :)

Edible adhesives have been around forever. Another case of poor quality "science" journalism just reprinting press releases without any kind of independent validation or context.

What about their taste? Can they feel neutral or do they get in the way?

Edit: interesting that somebody bothered to downvote a mere question. That does not seem to be very hacker-like.

Wish they would have said. But then is it "safe" to eat a lump of the stuff, fast food standards and all...

Asking about the new one or the old ones?

It would be good to know what the new one tastes/feels like.

As for existing methods… well, could be a thousand different flavours and textures. For example, and obviously this isn’t what the people in the article are doing, I often use molten cheese to seal tortilla wraps in my home cooking.

That plus readers upvoting on title alone --> front page!

As a mexican, I feel the need to stop this madness.

A taco is whatever you can put inside a tortilla (not a shell; if you are eating something in a shell, unless it’s a dry thin extended tortilla, called tostada, it’s not mexican food as found in México (mexican-american, maybe)), unless it’s a quesadilla.

To be more specific, there’s the canonical taco, and there is the “pass me a tortilla and the casserole because I’m going to make me a taco”. Here, if you are holding a soft tortilla with something in it, then it’s a taco (unless it’s a quesadilla).

I’ll be taking questions now :P

PS. For those of you who think all mexican food is alike, our cuisine is inscribed in UNESCO’s world heritage intangibles list[0].

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/11/17/131391343...

I eat burritos almost daily, and I don't see this as a problem that needed solving. But perhaps it may have usefulness in other creative applications?

Same. I'm surprised by this invention.

This is a bit of a hobby horse for me. I grew up in El Paso / Juárez which is arguably where the burrito was invented. The problem is that burritos these days try to pack two pounds of stuff into a one pound sack. A proper burrito is about the size and width of a baby's forearm, not the size of a whole baby. If you are hungry, eat two.

All the burrito places near me steam their tortillas, which seems to make them sticky enough to not require this product.

Is that what makes them so gummy and disgusting! I never knew. Got one that way takeout, got to my office, tried to unwrap and it stuck to the wrapper and split into a gooey half-stripped burrito and half-gummed wrapper. Dropped the whole mess into the trash can and never went back.

It sounds like you just went to a bad restaurant or you waited too long.

Takeout is supposed to be able to be taken out. And no, I walked two blocks to my office and opened it.

Bad restaurant

Can also happen if there are a lot of wet or watery ingredients and it sits in a wrapper for a while.

Two or three minutes.

I think the Vietnamese invented something similar long ago (rice paper) and it's transparent too!

I never knew this was a thing. In CJK, people use rice to make adhesive paste. This sounds like the NASA-ballpen-and-Russian-pencil story.

I learned how to make Samosas. They used water and flour to seal the pastry, I assume something like that could be used for burritos?

That's common in all sorts of pastry, but that's done pre-bake. A burrito is (bread not pastry and) wrapped post-baking. It may help a little, but probably also unwelcome moistness at the quantity it would take to do anything.

I see the opening pic with a cold, raw tortilla and thought, they're already doing it wrong. Go to a good Mexican restaurant and learn how to prepare food properly, then you'll see this tape is unnecessary. Maybe I'm spoiled in CA but this is a solution vin search of a problem.

Edible tape? There are so many pre-existing foods that get sticky when wet. Like seaweed wrap.

In my personal experience flour tortillas would fall into that category

Sushi rolls also stay together pretty well, so there's probably more ways to go about it.

They're called maki, specifically, if we think of the same thing.

Maki is just Japanese for "roll"

Good to know. Thanks!

Burritos stay together perfectly fine if you know how to wrap them and use the right size tortilla for whatever size burrito you are making.

Gastronomy of burrito is strange. Rice in a wrap doesn't sound right to me. Filling but bland. It's probably the worst type of wrap I've had. How it got so popular is a mystery to me.

You must be raised outside of california

Rice in burritos is a northern California thing, not as common in southern California.

Yep, about 7000 miles out. :)

It's cheap filler.

My wife and her mother sees burrito as a weird mix of everything, and argue food should be enjoyed separate.

I see burrito as a delicious mix of everything and eat nearly every day these days.

This something that annoys me to no end at places like chipotle. People ask for extra everything (except meat, they charge for that), then at the end the poor employee is struggling valiantly to close the monstrosity. Surely that is what this tape is intended for. This behavior also leaves every other person with a shred of dignity with an undersized portion since the employees are habitualized to underserve in order to deal with all the “extra everything” people.

Looks like fruit leather, which would probably work as well... however, it's unlikely this would be optimal for a non-dry burrito.

If you do a burrito properly, it stays wrapped.

Ya was thinking it’s not really a necessary innovation as well

This gives a more tight monad implementation

This is not needed if you know how to wrap a burrito correctly. Keep the training wheels on if you want.

Since you have to wet it, I assume it's made of some kind of starch?

I'm honestly kinda confused why you'd put tape like this on the outside rather than use it to seal the flap like an envelope.

What you need is a bigger tortilla or better technique. A properly filled and wrapped burrito is already sealed enough to hold by hand to eat.

Gross! Just use a fresh tortilla and toast the outside of the wrapped burrito and it will stick together no problem.

Time to update the list of adhesive tapes on Wikipedia, featured and discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31043179

I bet it's not vegan, maybe has gelatin in it.

Or you could just lick it before closing it.

I'd guess it might be an upgraded Nori?

I thought that was just called a tortilla?

Well that sure looks appetizing.

Not all heroes wear capes

To the other posters, maybe this has merit.

Nope. Not eating that even without food dye... Enjoy the chemicals

Isn't everything a chemical?

Ignorance isn't.

Not strictly everything is chemical in nature, just all the things that can physically be swallowed.

bare subatomic particles are not chemicals.

I'm trying to eat healthy, I'll take a large cup of protons please.

Helium gas is, but then is, Hydrogen plasma? :P

This is quite a boring argument, not really to defend GP's comment, but you know what they meant. There's plenty of 'processed crap' - whatever you want to call it - that I don't want to eat that, fine sure, is no more 'chemical' than the raw ingredients I'm using at home.

Why yes, everything is a chemical and by that logic everything is organic, and you can safely eat some amount of cyanide and arsenic each day. This is the same argument posed/disposed by HTC enthisuasts so thanks for joining in.

Doesn't mean I really want to eat yet another new age mix of fungus mixed with whatever newfangled soy protein because someone can't do their culinary job properly, seriously mankind has been eating food without this perfectly fine, it's a solution looking for a problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com