Tortilla Wrap Engineering

Big Red Car here in the ATX on a wickedly sunny, but crisp day. Ahhh, On Earth as it is in Texas! Today, we talk tortilla wrap and its engineering — complete assembly instructions like they were selling these babies at Ikea. No tools required.

So, the Big Red Car likes to take some nourishment at Green Mesquite on Barton Springs Road.

Green Mesquite Barbecue

When there, I like to have a chopped beef sandwich and if I’m really hungry, I’ll have a tortilla wrap as a chaser.

Let’s stop right here. Please do not tell me it’s called a “sausage wrap” and the wrapper is a tortilla. I made that mistake about a third of a century ago. When I walk into Green Mesquite on Barton Springs Road, my friend brings me an Arnold Palmer and a chopped beef with onions and pickles (like the service you get in an Emergency Room when time can be critical) and waits to find out whether we’re having a tortilla wrap chaser or not.

This level of fractured communication works for us and in all the years the NSA has never objected. So, just leave it alone.

So, I’m sitting there minding my own business and preparing my tortilla wrap, when a person at the next table, says, “What’s that?”

When any person in a barbecue joint — not just in the Louvre of barbecue joints like Green Mesquite — asks you, “What’s that?” you sort of know they’re not from around here. Or, they’ve lived in Texas for about an hour and a half.

The person then asked me how I “prepared” my tortilla wrap, to which question I provided a lengthy and meticulous answer.

 1. Make damn sure your tortilla is crispy and hot. A few char marks are fine.

 2. Ensure the sausage is secured in the middle of the tortilla. Test this by putting a preliminary fold on the tortilla, measuring it carefully for “centering.”

 3. Add onions — take a onion curl and cut it in half and insert the onions.

 4. Add pickles — it is perfectly fine to put the pickles in first and the onions on top, my personal preference.

 5. Put a light spritz of barbecue sauce on the tortilla and a single stripe on the sausage. Do not over sauce.

 6. Roll that baby tight.

 7. Bite into the tortilla wrap waiting and listening for the crunch of that crisp sausage skin.

I coached the curious person through the entire process and it was announced a success, though there was a little too much sauce, which dribbled down someone’s chin. It is an amateurish mistake to over sauce a tortilla wrap.

Folks will get into trouble the same way when they over stuff a taco. It happens and you learn and you stop doing that. It’s called “experience” and getting a bit of experience can be a very tasty thing.

So, that’s it, y’all. Now, you are an expert on the Green Mesquite tortilla wrap. Not saying you weren’t already, but everybody can use a tuneup from time to time. Glad I was here for y’all.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car! Be good to yourself. You deserve it. And, hey, if you are hungry — get on down to the Green Mesquite on Barton Springs and get a tortilla wrap. Tell them a Big Red Car sent you.