Birria has a special place in my heart as a dish that is used to celebrate. The reason I had the opportunity to prepare and share this amazing special dish with everyone was due to it being my 3-year-old sisters’ birthday. Otherwise, my family would have not gone through the trouble of making this dish, which requires much preparation and planning. Hopefully, this shows how special this dish truly is to my family, since I would have not been able to make it on just any day of the week in order to share with the class. Not only has this dish been special for my family here in the United states, but this appreciation for Birria stems from my family’s traditional Mexican background, since being able to afford all of the meat for this dish was something rare for my family when they still lived in Mexico. Birria will always hold a special place in many Mexican households because of its long preparation time and amazing flavor, especially in the Esqueda-Orozco family since the party is getting started when Birria is the main dish.

This dish is a very meat-heavy dish with little to no vegetables, depending on personal preference. This dish can be seen all over the place during many different Mexican celebrations, like baby showers, weddings, birthdays, quinces, and any other celebrations. It is not usually found in a Mexican household during a regular weekday since it is very labor intensive and expensive to make. For this reason, Birria is such a popular and appreciated dish, just like in my family, since in Mexico many people cannot afford to cook this dish often. I never truly knew the reason why we found birria so special until I was older and could truly see the poverty of my family back home in Mexico. During one vacation in Mexico, I learned that my great grandmother lives in a home built by the labor of her own family and that they farm for their own food. Even as elders, they were moving around and farming, since this was their only method of collecting food. I remember having little cousins who had never seen magnets before, which I had purchased at a market. Their amazement watching the magnets attracting each other brought me to tears because these 13-year-old boys, who share the same blood and last name as I do, did not have the resources to have ever seen a magnet. During that trip, we cooked birria with my whole family before we left, and made sure to leave my family’s fridge filled with the meat they could not afford regularly. I thought about this experience for the rest of the summer, which still has the ability to bring me to tears. This experience was the reason that today birria holds such a special place in my family and my hearts. We understand the privilege of being able to afford these ingredients when others do not have the same luxury.

This is the reason the dish is also held to such a high regard in other Mexican families. It is one of the few dishes that has such a large number of ingredients and long preparation time that in a regular Mexican village it would be made only on the most special of occasions, if possible. Even today, my family understands the cost to make this dish such that for many community holidays, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, everyone pitches in to buy the ingredients to cook this dish so no one person is burdened with the cost.

I would also like to bring your attention to how Birria affects the social aspect of a party within our culture. My family always holds events at our house for our whole family on holidays and birthdays. Additionally, the same people are always invited and come to our house to join in on the celebration. For example, the last celebration was my father’s birthday, and we had ceviche, a fish, and a shrimp dish that is found at many Mexican restaurants. When looking at the people who came this year and how they were dressed, this celebration was much more casual than my sister’s birthday celebration, when my family came more dressed up ready for a party, rather than a get-together. We had aunts and cousins dressed in high heels, and uncles in button-ups. Does this mean my sisters’ birthday was more special than my father’s subjectively? No, but when telling people, the dish being made was birria, my sister’s birthday party was held as a more special and “formal” party compared to my fathers. Even though this is small comparison, it is something that is probably not always realized, but since these two birthdays are close together, I noticed immediately.

Hopefully, through each if my explanations you can get an idea as to why birria is such a special dish, not only to me but to the Mexican culture. Even though this dish is something we can make in the United States during any and every celebration, this project made me truly think about how it affects our social interactions and how it is truly special to all of us. It also brought up the memories of my little cousins playing with magnets that I gifted them after seeing their amazement of what, for them, was “magic.” No matter where I go, no matter whether making Birria is a financial burden for my family in Mexico, or not as much of one here in the United States, I have noticed how special this dish truly is. So if you endeavor to make this dish on your own, find some family and friends, appreciate each other and the dish, as it truly is special to all of us around the world. I hope you enjoy my take on what birria means to me and my family and I hope it can also be something special for you too.