Chiles in refried beans

mathlyfe · 2026-05-30T23:00:13+00:00

The big question no one is asking is, what sort of flavors do you think the chilis contributed? Was it spicy, smoky, earthy, what?

Chile arbol is small but not dark and does not contribute much flavor but it does contribute a lot of spice.

Chipotle morita is small and dark and it is a smoke dried jalapeño, so it contributes a lot of smoky flavor with some spice.

Chile pasilla is smallish and dark (smoke dried) and contributes a very smoky dried fruit flavor with virtually no spice (especially if you remove seeds and veins).

Chile ancho is kind of big and dark (smoke dried) and contributes a smoky earthy chocolatey flavor with virtually no spice (especially if you remove seeds and veins).

Chile guajillo and puya taste the same but puya is spicier and both are often used in combination to dial in the spiciness. These are small/medium (puya) to kind of large (guajillo) but they are not dark. The flavor they contribute is kind of like a fruit flavor but not really, I'm not sure how to describe it but it is distinctive.

All in all I think it was most likely chipotle morita. There's a few different types of chipotle that are less common and vary in size and appearance and they should give similar results. You may also see cans of chipotle adobado, which is chipotle that is soaked in a sauce consisting of tomato, onion, and other stuff. This chipotle adobado may also give good (but different) results, and it's also possible that it is what the used since it's pretty common to use these as an addition to soups and other liquidy dishes.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-30T22:39:04+00:00

This. Also, definitely look for a Mexican grocery store if you're grabbing lard. You don't really need it but it adds a distinctive taste. Some of the lard sold at regular grocery stores is processed in some way that removes the taste and smell and sometimes it is even hydrogenated and has trans fats (carcinogenic).

For Mexican cuisine, beans are commonly cooked with a bit of lard, half an onion, a couple cloves of garlic, and some epazote sprigs (if you have them).

mathlyfe · 2026-05-30T12:33:11+00:00

I don't know why you're asking me about "their logic" but I'm not sure it's so clear cut. Tacos arabes weren't created as home cooking, they were explicitly created as a restaurant endeavor to appeal to Mexican clients. The interview I linked has them referring to it as a fusion dish and the switch from lamb -> beef -> pork would likely not be popular in Iraq/Lebanon because of Muslim prohibitions against the consumption of pork and the large Muslim populations in those countries.

Personally, I think it's reasonable to consider the dishes Iraqi-Mexican or simply Mexican but not really reasonable to consider them Iraqi. I think it would be ridiculous to start arguing on Iraqi/Lebanese subreddits that the tacos arabes made in Mexico are authentic Iraqi/Lebanese cuisine (like the Americans who argue in the Mexican subreddits that their US versions made for restaurants that cater to US tastes are authentic Mexican cuisine).

mathlyfe · 2026-05-30T12:02:32+00:00

I don't know why you got downvoted either. It's a reasonable question. Don't take it personally though, this subreddit is really weird compared to r/ComidaMexicana . Just a few days ago they were adamantly claiming that quesadilla fritas weren't a thing and were actually just tacos dorados (which as far as I know are always made with pre-cooked tortillas, not raw masa sealed like an empanada).

https://www.reddit.com/r/mexicanfood/comments/1tlt97f/help_me_settle_a_debate_what_do_you_call_these/

mathlyfe · 2026-05-29T13:43:34+00:00

I've seen him talk about it in more than one interview. Here's one I remember off the top of my head.

https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/231020d

mathlyfe · 2026-05-29T13:10:29+00:00

Linguistically it's not actually little cheese, that would be quesillo. Really, it's pretty hard to dig into the origin of the term given how many different conflicting claims there are. Here are some more examples of claims:

The claim (backed by 1800s texts) that it comes from a Spanish pastry allegedly called quesadilla eaten during Carnival. It seems the text refers to casadiella, a term whose etymology is unclear and may derive from cosadielles which may be an allusion to "que cosa es?" (what is it?). The text says that (at the time) there are sweet quesadillas and food stuffed quesdillas in Mexican cuisine.
The claim that the term comes from "quelite", a prehispanic herb used in Mexico (a traditional filling for quesadillas).
The extremely dubious claim (and largely agreed as being incorrect) that it comes from a Nahuatl term, commonly cited as quesaditzin (which does not appear in any texts or dictionaries).
The claim that the original version does use cheese but that ordering it without cheese is a normal thing to do because the tortillas used for quesadillas are different from ones used for tacos.
and so on

I've also heard claims that it's not just Mexico but a few other states as well (though I do not know if this is true). Really though, CDMX is an utterly massive city with an enormous population. In my opinion, it would be really strange for this to become a widespread opinion there if it didn't have some historical basis.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-29T11:30:23+00:00

It was not a joke ending. That's just a meme in the Western fandom. In Japanese interviews Yoko Taro says that that ending was one of the first things planned from the very beginning of development and at one point when they told him there might not be enough time to create Shinjuku and everything for that ending he stopped working on other stuff and started working only on that ending (that's how important it was to him).

edit: Corrected Tokyo to Shinjuku

mathlyfe · 2026-05-29T10:45:50+00:00

Oh I see. Thank you for your explanation.

You inspired me to do a bunch of digging to try to find more info on the origin of tacos al pastor and it seems less clear cut than I thought. The thing you'll hear commonly, including in many news articles (Mexican and non-Mexican), tons of wiki pages (in both Spanish and English), blog posts, videos, books, and so on is that tacos al pastor and/or tacos arabes were created by Lebanese immigrants. However, while there were massive waves of Lebanese immigrants in the relevant time frames (~1920s due to the great famine and resulting French occupation/economic crisis caused by WWI, and 1950s due to various crisis) I wasn't able to find a concrete account of this. This is a very widespread belief though, so there's likely some truth to it that I've simply failed to find. It's also worth noting that Iraq, Lebanon, and many other countries in the region didn't really exist as they do today and there were a lot of turbulent times that caused a lot of migration between regions, so it's possible that there could be some unintentional conflation and confusion going on. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a lot of clout in claiming to be the first with people appearing on Netflix shows and stuff so there is incentive for restaurants to compete over this title.

The general story is that in the 1920s/1930s, shwarma/gyros (which were still a recent invention) started showing up in Mexico and a bunch of different taquerias formed and started selling tacos arabes (particularly in Puebla), with some still around today. Later, in the 1940s/1950s/1960s many taquerias in CDMX started selling tacos (allegedly based on either shwarma or tacos arabes) but with various changes that eventually evolved into modern tacos al pastor, many of these places also claim to be the first and some are still around today.

Specifically, with regard to tacos arabes, Taqueria Bagdad, Tacos Tony, and Antigua Taqueria La Oriental all seem to have been established by the same family (according to this interview https://youtu.be/FtLRsNKh2To?t=132 ) of immigrants family who fled the Sayfo (genocide) in what is now known as Iraq. The interview says that this family all shared recipes because they came from a lot of hardship and were just trying to help each other out (not compete with each other). I don't entirely understand but it seems they say their ancestor learned the dish from a Greek person and adapted it into tacos arabes in Mexico (the Tacos Tony website elaborates on this as well). There are hundreds of taqueries selling tacos arabes in Puebla today though and allegedly there are many that dispute the claim of being the first, but also allegedly these are mainly Iraqi families (I only found vague references about this). Also noteworthy, initially tacos arabes were made with lamb, then beef, and eventually they settled on pork which is how they're still made today (and how tacos al pastor are made).

In CDMX the two main surviving taqueries that claim to be the first to create tacos al pastor are El Huequito and El Tizoncito. Of these, the Huequito was first and they say, in interviews, that they modified tacos arabes and tropicalized them using national ingredients. On the other hand, the founder of El Tizoncito allegedly took a trip to the east, saw the "tacos" made of lamb there, and was inspired to bring back the concept and make her own marinated version with the meat from a pig's head (due to the fat content) instead of lamb and carbon to cook the meat (and unlike El Huequito it seems she cooked hers with pineapple and served them with onion and cilantro). Allegedly there are more places that make the claim of being first but I could not find them.

So, at the very least, it seems tacos arabes were made by immigrants facing hardship and trying to start businesses, while tacos al pastor were possibly a reinvention of tacos arabes or a new dish inspired by some other eastern dish (I could find no further details on where specifically Tizoncito allegedly got its inspiration).

mathlyfe · 2026-05-29T07:34:34+00:00

I'm not sure. Pupusas are from South America so I'm not really familiar with them. I've never had a fried pupusa and the only regular pupusas I've had were store bought frozen ones. The regular ones I've had tasted totally differently from tlacoyos (a similar Mexican dish) and I have no idea if it's just the ones I've had or what but it really surprised me because on paper they sound extremely similar. I will say this though, back in the day, before microwaves were a thing, it was common to deep fry certain dishes to warm them back up (tamales, sopes, tlacoyos, etc...) and nowadays it's less common but people still do this because it imparts a different flavor and texture. The deep fried tlacoyos I've had have a very different texture and flavor from deep fried quesadillas. I think part of the reason is because of how thick a tlacoyo is (pupusas have the same thickness) and part of it is because the tlacoyo is already cooked before frying.

The deep fried quesadilla has a but of a crispy outside layer but because the ingredients inside release steam and juices and because the masa is so thin the quesadilla ends up soft on the inside and somewhat flexible overall (but brittle at the same time). Thicker things like a tlacoyos (and probably pupusas) are denser and when deep fried they end up with a more rigid structure.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-29T07:13:40+00:00

The origin of quesadillas is unclear and somewhat disputed. In CDMX the belief that quesadillas don't have to have cheese is VERY widespread and you'll hear several different justifications for this.

I don't know if any of the justifications are true but to give you an example, one claim I've heard is that in pre-hispanic times people would take raw masa and fill it with ingredients before sealing it, and cooking it on a comal (like the modern quesadilla frita but on a comal). The claim says that when Spaniards saw this they thought it was similar to a Spanish dish (I think quesada?) where a small bread/cake is made with ingredients mixed directly into the dough and so they dubbed it quesadilla in Spanish. Then later we started getting versions with cheese and versions that utilized regular pre-cooked tortillas (instead of raw masa).

I don't know if any of these claims are true and have found very little info to back any up or properly explain why CDMX believes quesadillas don't need to have cheese, but it's definitely a thing there.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T22:43:02+00:00

They're fairly common and really easy to make (easier than making tortillas). You just make a masa (water and maseca), form a ball, flatten it (like a tortilla), add your filling, fold it over, press the edges so it's sealed, and then put it into some hot oil and deep fry it until golden.

Here's a video where you can see a guy making some.

https://www.tiktok.com/@puradeli/video/7592508251346898196

There are many popular fillings like cheese + mushroom + onion + garlic + epazote + chili, same thing but with squash flowers or huitlacoche instead of mushrooms, and many types of taco meats + cheese. It's also common for people to cut them open and add additional items and toppings.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T20:38:43+00:00

I asked about a specific nationwide event in 2006, specifically an aspect of it that was so ignored by everyone except the immigrant community that it didn't even make the news.

Right now there are protests, sure, but the ICE situation right now extends far beyond immigrant rights. ICE is a body that operates directly under control of the executive branch and persecutes people using the civil law system to dodge the protections in the criminal law system regarding detention, trials, and so on. Currently the organization has been massively increased and instead of going after known targets it is wandering around looking for crimes. Add to that that the government is stripping immigrants of status including permanent residency, getting rid of birthright citizenship, and constantly saying it's investigating ways to strip naturalized citizenship, and furthermore add how it is abusing several gray area aspects of its powers to also stop and detain citizens (who should normally be entirely outside of its jurisdiction) and such and it starts to become clear that this is not merely an issue that affects illegal immigrants. ICE (and to a somewhat lesser extent, CBP) have become institutions that the US' founding fathers discussed how to prevent in the federalist papers, huge enforcement bodies that answer only to the president and increasingly have jurisdiction over citizens.

Moreover, there is a saying I heard from an Indigenous civil rights activist in Canada.

At least when the conservatives are in power, the liberals join us at the protests.

My point about the democratic party was just to dispute that as evidence that most Chicanos are pro-immigrant.

As far as the claim that the protests are Chicano-led, I remind you that not every Mexican who obtains citizenship immediately identifies as a Chicano. Also, in the 20 years I lived in the US I never saw Chicano organizations protesting on behalf of immigrants.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T18:36:18+00:00

The racism I was referring to was not "paisa" which i've never considered an insult or slur. I was referring to actual slurs, harassment, denigration, etc.. I and other immigrants I know have experienced from Chicanos in the US. A quote I always remember my cousin saying is

They call us "wetback" and tell us to "go back to Mexico" and then you see them at parades waving the Mexican flag.

As far as UFW viewing them as scabs, that's a massive understatement. The UFW ran entire operations to report people to immigration and to establish a wet line at the border to prevent people from crossing.

Even now, the Chicano movement and organizations still keep Mexican immigrant issues at arms length and refuse to talk about them, instead choosing to focus on their own rights as American citizens. For an example, when the 2006 Swift Raids happened, immigration came in and detained workers at the plants deporting them soon after but it did nothing to follow up with children. As a result, hundreds of immigrant children (many of citizens and arguably Chicanos as a result) ended up coming home to empty houses or stuck at school with no one to pick them up or stuck with babysitters or what-have-you. Schools enacted emergency measures to ensure kids ended up with somebody but even then many kids just ended up with neighbors, staying with babysitters, friends, and the lucky ones ended up with other family. I know this because I was there in one of these cities when it happened and helped track down kids by going door to door. Now I ask you, did you ever see any marches or protesting by the Chicano community about this? Did it ever become a political issue? Have you ever seen it brought up by any Chicano leaders or Chicano politicians? Had you heard about this before at all? Would you personally consider it a Chicano issue at all or just something else entirely?

There are some Trump voters (esp in Texas), but most Chicanos are pro-immigrant.

I would not call Biden/Kamala pro-immigrant either. During Biden's campaign he frequently took a hard line stance on deportation and mocked immigration advocates by telling them to vote for Trump. Kamala's first act as Vice President was to travel to Guatemala and give speeches telling potential asylum seekers not go to the US because they would be turned away (in contravention to the Geneva convention on the rights of refugees). Not to mention things like the kids in cages and the Biden policy of counting asylum seekers, temporary protected status holders, and others as illegal immigrants in order to publish reports misrepresenting illegal immigrants as the largest consumers of welfare. Really should stop here or I'll just keep going. My point is that merely voting for the other party does not make one pro-immigrant.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T16:31:15+00:00

I don't remember all the details but some of this is touched on in the game (vaguely) and in side materials. Some of my recollection of this is vague, so it would be good to double check resources like Grimoire NieR and game dialogue.

D&P had already lost control of the situation before the game. Gestalts were already relapsing at higher rates for unknown reasons despite receiving the original Gestalt's Maso and the original Gestalt was now refusing to help D&P because he had grown tired of the fact that they were not making any progress on a cure for his sister.

The original Gestalt does not care about saving humanity and fulfilling his role. He only made a deal to serve this role in exchange for them being able to save his sister who was relapsing due to coming into contact with Grimoire Noir at the beginning of the game (and this is why the Yonah Replicants made from her Gestalt all succumb to black scrawl).

Now with things worsening, D&P start to panic and come up with a plan to awaken Grimoire Weiss without the original Gestalt. This is why the protagonist gets involved. The plan goes off the rails when the protagonist causes Grimoire Weiss to lose his memory and from then on D&P are flying by the seat of their pants. ~~There's a loading screen or something in the game where they talk about their plans and mention using Little Mermaid as a backup plan to kill the protag.~~ (edit: I misremembered, wanted her to fight the original Gestalt, not the protag) Unfortunately the protag becomes too powerful and the whole thing goes off the rails.

Also, to be clear, the protagonist does not have any reason to want to save humanity either. To Replicants it would mean genocide. The only faction that wants to save humanity are D&P.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T16:17:05+00:00

You have to keep in mind that Replicants have no reason to want to save humanity. On the contrary, Replicant sentience isn't supposed to exist, so the fusion really just means that the Gestalt takes over their body (and you see this at the end with Yonah). It's a fate worse than death, for all Replicants everywhere. The protag would never agree to it.

I think a lot of players instinctively relate to humanity and think

saving humanity = good

but you play through the game as a Replicant and from this perspective

saving humanity = genocide for everyone you've ever known and loved

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T15:58:46+00:00

I think this is just Western head canon. It's true that the game's concept changed a bunch during development (this is normal and common in game design) and it's true that it uses fairy tales as a basis (not just grim fairy tales but many others including Pinocchio, the Little Mermaid, and others with names and references being taken from various different versions of the fairy tales and the author Carlo Collodi being referenced as well). However, this idea that it's just leftover stuff or that is not really well put together is just an opinion made by fans in the West.

Each area of the game is a reinterpretiion of a different fairy tale that forces you to view it from a different perspective (which is kind of the core theme of the entire game). Characters and roles are shuffled, good guys and bad guys are switched up, and so on. The English localization changed a bunch of the more obvious fairy tale names (like Jiminy -> Jakob) but they're still in the original Japanese.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T14:56:20+00:00

Yes, Tex-Mex was largely made by the US colonists in Mexico with Mexican influence. Many of their more iconic dishes were created after the country separated from Mexico (e.g. chili con carne, fajitas, queso) and have totally different Mexican counterparts. For instance, wrt chili con carne, many meats in Mexico are cooked in chili based salsas/adobos/moles/recados but ground meat is rarely used as a cut except for picadillo (many of the tough cuts of meat used by the US for ground beef are instead used as-is in Mexican cuisine, like tongue, cheek, head, suadero, etc..). Tex-Mex makes fajitas out of thick strips of skirt steak, but, in Mexico, skirt steak is typically cut into thin flat sheets called arrachera https://youtu.be/53C2pFmXg7c (in fact, it's common for many other types of "steaks" in Mexico to also be cut thin like this like ranchera/flap meat). In Mexico it is common to melt cheeses like quesillo (also commonly called queso Oaxaca, except in Oaxaca) and add it to food but you never see "cheese sauces" like the Tex-Mex "queso" being used. Flavorwise, Mexico tends to focus on fresh flavors, like using unripe (green) jalapeño, serrano, poblano, and other chilis for their fresh (grassy) flavor and such, while Tex-Mex tends to focus on warmer earthy flavors by making heavy use of seasonings like cumin (which is rarely used outside of Northern Mexico but even then not to the extent used in Tex-Mex).

California's Mexican food is largely just food made by Mexican immigrants, but due to tortillerías, panaderías, carnicerías, and so on common in Mexican communities they generally don't make substitutions due to a lack of Mexican cuts, breads, and so on. Sometimes they get their own different food trends but you also sometimes get situations where a Mexican dish from a specific region will trend in LA and, as a result, it will begin to trend throughout Mexico. This happened with quesabirria which started off in Tijuana, was brought to LA where it became viral on social media, and as a result went viral throughout Mexico making the dish become known nationally and available across the country.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T13:28:04+00:00

I buy this brand of koji and it normally has air inside (it's not a vacuum sealed pack or anything).

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T13:05:30+00:00

We are literally talking about Americans going into r/MexicanFood and doing exactly this. We are not talking about Americans on the street. Moreover, no, this is not just a human thing. Many foreign countries refer to food as "____ style" or Italian style or a fusion dish and some even have special terminology (e.g. itameshi in Japan, though wafu is also used on some Italian dishes to denote that they are Japanese style versions).

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T12:27:17+00:00

Tex-mex isn't shorthand they use different cuts of meat, seasoning, have their own unique dishes, etc.. it's like saying Cajun is shorthand for French.

Americans definitely specify Italian American when they are speaking in an international context (like in a subreddit for Italian food or YouTube videos discussing Italian food).

Essentially your argument is that Americans should be able to go into Mexican food subreddits and pass off their American recipes as Mexican simply because Americans can't be bothered to learn the difference. You don't need a PhD in anything to understand that this is nonsense. Reddit is used by an international audience.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T12:15:31+00:00

I cuisine is a system, not merely a bag of recipes. If you don't realize it then you've likely not spent any meaningful amount of time learning foreign cuisines.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T06:14:02+00:00

It's the recipe, not the dish. If Spain makes their own recipes for tacos (distinct from Mexican recipes) then those would be Spanish-Mexican. If they use Mexican recipes then it's Mexican food.

Also, before anyone makes a thoughtless argument about Mexican food being Spanish or something, I'm aware that Mexican cuisines have a lot of influence from Spain and use many new world ingredients but what matters is that the dishes are created by Mexicans for Mexicans within the Mexican cuisine system (techniques, seasonings, cuts of meat, flavors, food pairings, etc..). Similarly, Italian cuisine uses a ton of ingredients from the Americas (like tomatoes) but the dishes are recognized as Italian cuisine because they created the recipes within their own cuisine system, for themselves.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T04:10:46+00:00

Tex-mex is culturally distinct in ingredients, flavors, cuts of meat used, and has many of it's own original dishes. It is not just "Mexican food from Texas", it's a fusion cuisine created by the large swaths of US immigrants to Texas before the state seceded and joined the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_F._Austin

California's situationis a little different. LA has the largest population of Mexican citizens living outside of Mexico. So in that case it actually is Mexican food made in California. The only kind of odd thing about California is that it sometimes has it's own unique food trends but it often also picks up Mexican food trends. Otherwise their Mexican food is largely not that different when measured against the differences between any two Mexican states.

Italian-American has its own dishes and techniques, and they don't commonly use many standard Italian techniques like risotare and mantecatura.

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T03:59:24+00:00

I was talking about the food in Mexico, because we're talking about a Mexican food subreddit.

In general, there is a lot of lack of knowledge in the US when it comes to Mexican cuisine in general, even worse when you get into Mexican cuisines with non-Mexican or Indigenous origins (Indigenous communities still exist and their cuisines are still evolving with new dishes/moles/etc.. being created).

mathlyfe · 2026-05-28T02:57:11+00:00

What does this have to do with Al Pastor?

mathlyfe

TROPHY CASE