Birria Tacos with Consome

Jalisco owns this pot, and Cocula is where you start. Birria de chivo moved from those western towns into Guadalajara's birrierias, into the mercados, into the Sunday tables where the consome arrives in clay cups and the tortillas come hot from the comal. This is not food from a single Mexico. This is Jalisco speaking in chile, vinegar, goat, and patience.

The chiles tell you where you are: guajillo for clean red color, ancho for sweetness, cascabel for that round toasted nuttiness, and chile de arbol for a sharp line of heat. Not a handful of anonymous dried chiles. Name them. Toast them. Soak them correctly. The women who perfected this dish did not write 'add chili powder' in a notebook and call it cooking.

In the old way, the goat was rubbed with adobo, tucked into a pot with maguey, sealed, and cooked until the meat surrendered into its own broth. The taco dipped in red fat and crisped on the comal is the taqueria face of birria, not the whole story, but it is a good one when the consome is serious and the tortillas are corn. Flour tortillas belong to other regions. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

I learned birria from a señora in the Mercado Libertad in Guadalajara who slapped my hand away when I reached for the meat too early. 'Todavia no,' she told me. Not yet. That is the lesson. Birria is not difficult because it is fancy. It is difficult because you have to wait until the pot tells you it is ready. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.