chimichanga

A Chimichanga with Rice

Chimichanga (pronounced /tʃɪmiˈtʃɑːŋɡə/; Spanish pronunciation: [tʃimiˈtʃaŋɡa]), or chivichanga, is a deep-fried burrito that is popular in Southwestern cuisine, Tex-Mex cuisine, and the Mexican states of Sinaloa^[1] and Sonora.^[2][3] The dish is typically prepared by filling a flour tortilla with a wide range of ingredients, most commonly beans, rice, cheese, ground beef, shredded beef, carne adobada, or shredded chicken, and folding it into a rectangular package. It is then deep-fried and can be accompanied with salsa, guacamole, sour cream and/or cheese.

Origins

Debate over the origins of the chimichanga is ongoing:^[4][5]

• According to one source,^[6] the founder of the Tucson, Arizona, restaurant El Charro, Monica Flin, accidentally dropped a pastry into the deep fat fryer in 1922. She immediately began to utter a Spanish curse-word beginning "chi..." (chingada), but quickly stopped herself and instead exclaimed chimichanga, the Spanish equivalent of thingamajig.^[7] Fortuitously, the euphemism was a well understood Indianism for the standard Spanish "chango quemado", meaning "broiled monkey", which the chimichanga resembles.

A Chimichanga with refried beans and rice served at an Illinois restaurant.

• Woody Johnson, the founder of Macayo's Mexican Kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona also claimed to have prepared the first chimichanga. According to Johnson, he created the dish in 1946 by throwing some unsold burritos from his El Nido restaurant into a deep fryer and serving them to customers who arrived later in the day. The fried burritos were popular, and became a permanent fixture on the menu once Johnson opened Macayo's in 1952.^[5].

Although no official records indicate when the dish first appeared, retired University of Arizona folklorist Jim Griffith recalls seeing chimichangas at the Yaqui Old Pascua Village in Tucson in the mid-1950s.^[8]

• Given the variant chivichanga, mainly employed in Mexico, another derivation would have it that immigrants to the United States brought the dish with them, mainly through Nogales into Arizona. A third, and perhaps most likely possibility, is that the chimichanga, or chivichanga, has long been a part of local cuisine of the Pimería Alta of Arizona and Sonora, with its early range extending southward into Sinaloa. In any case, it is all but uncontroversial that within the United States, knowledge and appreciation of the dish spread slowly outward from the Tucson area, with popularity elsewhere accelerating in recent decades. Though the chimichanga is now found as part of the Tex-Mex repertoire, its roots within the U.S. seem to be in Pima County, Arizona.

External links

• Recipe for Vegetarian Baked Chimichangas
• Chimichanga recipes
• Recipe for Breakfast Chimichangas

Further reading

• Trulsson, Nora Burba. (1999). "Chimichanga mysteries: The origin of Tucson's deep-fried masterpiece is an enigma wrapped in a tortilla ". Sunset. October.

• Miller, Tom. Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest (National Geographic Books, 2000), pp. 79–81.

References