Mexican Name Finder
Soup or stewSpanishJalisco

Birria

"worthless thing, a mess"

Say it

BEE·ryah

Where it comes from

Spanish birria (junk, something of no value)

What Birria means

Birria is a Mexican soup or stew name of Spanish origin meaning "worthless thing, a mess". It comes from Spanish birria (junk, something of no value). It is pronounced BEE-ryah, and it is most associated with Jalisco.

In Spain birria meant rubbish or a worthless person. The name began as a slight against goat meat thought fit for nobody, and the dish reclaimed it; the word now means the opposite of what it says.

This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: Pozole, menudo, birria, caldo. Mexican soup names are blunt and descriptive: menudo means "the small things", the offal that goes in it, and pozole comes from a Nahuatl word for foam, describing how the hominy blooms open as it cooks.

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Birria means worthless thing, a mess

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