Chimichanga also known as chivichanga or chimmy chonga is a deep-fried burrito

Burrito

A burrito , or taco de harina, is a type of Mexican food. It consists of a wheat flour tortilla wrapped or folded around a filling. The flour tortilla is usually lightly grilled or steamed, to soften it and make it more pliable. In Mexico, refried beans or meat are sometimes the only fillings...

 that is popular in Southwestern U.S. cuisine, Tex-Mex cuisine

Tex-Mex cuisine

"Tex-Mex" is a term used to describe a regional American cuisine that blends food products available in the United States and the culinary creations of Mexican-Americans influenced by the cuisines of Mexico. The cuisine has spread from border states such as Texas and those in the Southwestern...

, and the Mexican states of Sinaloa

Sinaloa

Sinaloa officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sinaloa is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales....

 and Sonora

Sonora

Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....

. The dish is typically prepared by filling a flour tortilla with a wide range of ingredient

Ingredient

An ingredient is a substance that forms part of a mixture . For example, in cooking, recipes specify which ingredients are used to prepare a specific dish. Many commercial products contain a secret ingredient that is purported to make them better than competing products...

s, most commonly rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

, cheese

Cheese

Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....

, machaca, carne adobada

Adobada

Adobada is a concept for many dishes that are common in Mexican cuisine similar to tacos. Adobada is generally pork marinated in a "red" chili sauce with vinegar and oregano, but it can refer to different types of meat and to marinades closer to Al pastor...

, or shredded chicken, and folding it into a rectangular package. It is then deep-fried and can be accompanied with salsa

Salsa (sauce)

Salsa may refer to any type of sauce. In American English, it usually refers to the spicy, often tomato based, hot sauces typical of Mexican and Central American cuisine, particularly those used as dips. In British English, the word typically refers to salsa cruda, which is common in Mexican ,...

, guacamole

Guacamole

Guacamole , is an avocado-based dip that originated in Mexico. It is traditionally made by mashing ripe avocados with a molcajete with sea salt. Some recipes call for limited tomato, spicy Asian spices such as white onion, lime juice, and/or additional seasonings.-History:Guacamole was made by...

, sour cream

Sour cream

Sour cream is a dairy product rich in fats obtained by fermenting a regular cream by certain kinds of lactic acid bacteria. The bacterial culture, which is introduced either deliberately or naturally, sours and thickens the cream. Its name stems from the production of lactic acid by bacterial...

 and/or cheese. Many restaurants offer non-fried chimichangas, which are similar to normal burrito, with cheese sauce, guacamole, and tomato.

Origins

Debate over the origins of the chimichanga is ongoing:

• According to one source, the founder of the Tucson, Arizona
  Tucson, Arizona
  Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
  
  , restaurant El Charro, Monica Flin, accidentally dropped a pastry into the deep fat fryer in 1922. She immediately began to utter a Spanish
  Spanish language
  Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
  
   curse-word
  Profanity
  Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
  
   beginning "chi..." (chingada), but quickly stopped herself and instead exclaimed chimichanga, a Spanish equivalent of thingamajig. Fortuitously, the euphemism was a well understood Indianism for the standard Spanish "chango quemado", meaning "burnt monkey".

• Other sources claim they were first served in Mexico in the early 1920’s. They had been perfected by the Cocreham family, an Irish/Mexican family. Several family members claim to be the inventor of the Chimichanga, but all agree that they came from the “Flauta” which is rolled with a corn tortilla. It took several flautas to fill one up because the corn tortilla is smaller than a flour tortilla. So to save time to feed her 13 children, Guadalupe Cocreham started using flour tortillas filled with spicy shredded beef. Her children were allowed to garnish them how they liked, thus several of her children claim to be the “inventor” because of how they garnished their own Chimichanga.

• Woody Johnson, the founder of Macayo's Mexican Kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona
  Phoenix, Arizona
  Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
  
   also claimed to have prepared the first chimichanga. According to Johnson, he created the dish in 1946 by throwing some unsold burritos from his El Nido restaurant into a deep fryer and serving them to customers who arrived later in the day. The fried burritos were popular, and became a permanent fixture on the menu once Johnson opened Macayo's in 1952.

• Although no official records indicate when the dish first appeared, retired University of Arizona
  University of Arizona
  The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
  
   folklorist Jim Griffith recalls seeing chimichangas at the Yaqui Old Pascua
  Pascua Yaqui Tribe
  The Pascua Yaqui Tribe is a tribe of Native Americans, acknowledged by the United States government on September 18, 1978.Most U.S. members of the tribe live in southern Arizona. Descended from the ancient Uto-Azteca people of Mexico, the ancestors of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe first settled in the...
  
   Village in Tucson in the mid-1950s.

• Given the variant chivichanga, mainly employed in Mexico, another derivation would have it that immigrants to the United States brought the dish with them, mainly through Nogales into Arizona. A third, and perhaps most likely possibility, is that the chimichanga, or chivichanga, has long been a part of local cuisine of the Pimería Alta
  Pimería Alta
  The Pimería Alta , an area of the 18th century Sonora y Sinaloa Province in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, encompassed parts of what are today southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora in Mexico....
  
   of Arizona and Sonora, with its early range extending southward into Sinaloa. In Sinaloa the chimichangas are small. In any case, it is all but uncontroversial that within the United States, knowledge and appreciation of the dish spread slowly outward from the Tucson area, with popularity elsewhere accelerating in recent decades. Though the chimichanga is now found as part of the Tex-Mex
  Tex-Mex
  Tex-Mex is a regional American cuisine that blends food products available in the United States and the culinary creations of Mexican-Americans influenced by the cuisines of Mexico.Tex Mex may also refer to:...
  
   repertoire, its roots within the U.S. seem to be in Pima County, Arizona.