Carmen Medina had no choice but to invent the huaraches, a large dish that she marketed to support her children.
With green, red or morita sauce, they can have cream, powdered cheese or even melted cheese to make them taste better, some others put roast beef, chicken or even chorizo, Mexican huaraches are delicious and now they have become an indelible piece of our gastronomic culture.
But despite their exquisite simplicity, someone must have invented them, it was a woman named Carmen Gómez Medina, better known as Carmelita, one of the many women from the 1930´s who had no other way to support her family than to put a food stand in a corner of Mexico City, start making the dough and prepare these delicacies to the delight of their customers.
The huaraches were born in the Canal de la Viga
Well, that this woman had her stall on a corner is partly a saying, because her small business, the business where the huaraches arose, was on the shore of the extinct Canal de la Viga, an aquifers torrent that started from the lake of Xochimilco and went to the center.
Returning to the origin of the huarache, we must say that its creator, Doña Carmelita, was dedicated to selling tlacoyos and sopes in the aforementioned place, so she knew very well how to handle the dough, but one day she decided, at the request of a demanding client who was a butcher, decided to make a larger and longer tlacoyo, making a few holes in the upper part.
Her product began to be very successful, so she named it “huarache” because of its similarity to traditional Mesoamerican footwear. More people began to replicate her formula, because unlike the tlacoyo, the huaraches are fried in lard, then bathed in red or green sauce.
Source: Mexico Desconocido
