Why are flour tortillas more popular than corn tortillas?

Question

Corn tortillas are more traditional, they taste better, and they're better for you. The Aztecs and other ancient Native American peoples of Mexico prepared tortillas with corn long before the Spanish brought flour over. Corn tortillas have a really great flavor to them, while white flour torillas are so bland. I don't get it? It isn't like maize is a rare delicacy, so it can't be expense.

Answer 1

I'll agree with you on the taste and health issues of corn vs flour. I myself prefer corn for those reasons mostly, and your history of Meso-American Indian tradition on tortillas is correct. However, in modern America I think the convenience of using flour tortillas is more the issue for most folks who prefer them. They're larger, and more pliable to use than corn most times. And dispite the fact flour tortillas help make folks fat as a hog, it's the ease using them that makes them more popular. They do make for a better burrito, structurally speaking. Face it, people are lazy, and flavor, tradition, and health too often take a back seat to convenience when it comes to eating most anything these days. That's why there are "senior Chefs" at Del Taco, lol.

I've only ever found flour tortillas served up right off the bat in Mexican restaurants where the restaurant food itself wasn't true to traditional. Like in some areas of the US where Americans are not expected to know what real Mexican food tastes like or has in it, competition is low or doesn't exist, and some tex-Mexicans out for the quick buck take advantage of that and serve up Hamburger as the beef ingredient in everything, say instead of shredded. Most Mexican restaurants anywhere aside the fast-food chains will offer both corn and flour tortillas, if just to cater the preferences of their un-sophisticated customers.

Corn tortillas are traditionally made with fat, yes, but healthy versions that are as soft and flavorful, and pliable as the traditional ones are readily available these days. So don't believe what anyone here says about flour tortillas being healthier. Corn, in any form, out-weighs white processed flour for health any day.

Answer 2

You're probably right on the history of corn tortillas, however, a meal isn't a history point, it is the event.

Many mexican restaurants will use corn tortillas as an accompaniment to a dish.
Flour tortillas are use most often as a vehicle of delivery for an ingredient(or mix of).
Flour tortillas are also larger. -- making for a larger package
It is the bland nature of flour tortillas which marry so beautifully with the ingredient(s)
Etc.

"Corn tortillas have a really great flavor to them" as you note, but some might find the taste too overpowering.

There is not a right/wrong -- it's food, enjoy.

Answer 3

Flour tortillas are less likely to leak! That's why you see them more as burritos. Try making a burrito out of a corn tortilla and you'll understand.

Answer 4

flour tortillas taste really good if they are made right. if you go and buy them in the store they taste horrible, in my opinion ,they have to be made right, and at home. corn tortillas are very good too and healthier, but healthier doesn't always taste the best. basically, its a matter of preference.

Answer 5

I actually think it is the other way around. Maybe it varies in different parts of the country but where I live most of the Mexican restaurants around here serve most of their dishes with corn tortillas.

Answer 6

Right off hand I would say that flour tortillas are more pliable and easier to mold around their content, plus I believe there is less fat involved in a flour tortilla.

Answer 7

Flour taste better...I think so anyway.

Answer 8

They're more like white bread, that's why they're so popular.

Answer 9

flour is cheaper

Answer 10

I think because they are tastier, however they blow you up faster than the other ones.