Jalapeños Toritos Norteños

Toritos belong to el Norte. Nuevo León claims them, Coahuila and Tamaulipas serve them at every carne asada, and Sonora has its own version with carne seca instead of machaca. This is a northern dish through and through, and you can read every part of it on the map: the bacon, the cattle country, the flour tortilla on the side, the cold beer it is meant to be eaten with.

The filling is the argument. Some norteño cooks fill the chile with nothing but queso crema and call it done. Others insist on machaca, the air-dried beef of the Norte, rehydrated and cooked with onion and tomato into what they call machaca a la mexicana. I cook it both ways depending on who is at the table, but the version with machaca is the one I learned from a señora in Monterrey who fed her sons toritos every Sunday before the futbol game. She told me the cheese alone is fine, but the machaca is what makes it Norteño. She was right.

Flour tortillas at the table, not corn. That is one of the things people get wrong about Mexican food. The flour tortilla is a northern tradition, born of the wheat country of Sonora and Chihuahua, and it belongs with this dish the way the corn tortilla belongs with carnitas. Do not put a corn tortilla next to a torito just because somebody on the internet said all Mexican food eats with corn. Esto no es comida de un solo Mexico.

One more thing. The chile here is jalapeño, fresh and whole, and the heat depends on the season and the harvest. Taste a sliver from the chile before you commit. If it is mild, leave the veins in. If it is fierce, take them out. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.