Baleada

Baleadas are one of Honduras's most original and popular foods. A baleada is a wheat flour tortilla, often quite thick, folded in half and filled with mashed fried beans. This is the no-frills baleada. People may also add other ingredients. The most common types of baleadas are the baleadas simple (simple baleada) which has crumbled cheese and cream. The other baleada is the baleada mixta (mixed baleada) which has same as the baleada simple but with an additional scrambled eggs. Many other people add sausage, plantain, hot sauce, avocado, chicken, pork and chimol which is diced tomato, onion and bell pepper. The big Honduran towns often have more than one restaurant that sells baleadas.

Baleadas Express is a popular Honduran fast food restaurant.

Honduran soccer player Edgar Alvarez stated once that baleadas are what make him fast.

History

There are two stories behind the baleada's name. The first one says that they are called baleadas since beans have a bullet shape and bullet in spanish is "bala" hence by adding the suffix "ada" it makes it baleada. The other story is that a woman used to make tortilla with beans and she was shot so every one use to say, "let's go eat at the baleada", as stated before, it comes from bala.

En tegucigalpa esta abriendo COCO BALEADAS, sin duda nadie penso que la baleada podria ser tan buena.

Types of Baleada

There are different kinds of Baleada according to the ingredients chosen by the costumer or the region of Honduras.

1. Simple Baleada (beans, sour cream, cheese)2. Special Baleadas (beans, sour cream, cheese, scrambled eggs)3. Super Special Baleadas (beans, sour cream, cheese, scrambled eggs, chicken, grinded meat or sausage)

In the region of Olancho and Ocotepeque the special baleada is served with all of the above and carne asada.In La Ceiba you can find the special baleada with all of the above fried pork meat.

There is some speculation about that "Gringas" (a flour tortilla with melted cheese and grinded meat) are originated from baleadas.