Chipotle Is Engineering the Perfect Tortilla

Chipotle’s tortillas serve as the vehicle to stuff all that meat, salsa, cheese, rice, and guac into your face. And now, the goodies-holders are the key ingredient to Chipotle's plans for world domination, as the fast-casual chain is working on making even better and tastier flour tortilla that it can sling to hundreds of thousands of people every day.

According to a report by The New York Times, the company is hard at work in search of the perfect, moist, floppy flour tortilla in a special tortilla lab at Washington State University. Specifically, the burrito chain overlords want to create “artisanal” tortillas that taste better, have fewer ingredients, support the contents of a big-ass burrito, and can be produced at a massive scale.

One prototype tortilla Chipotle has experimented with contains just four ingredients — whole-wheat flour, water, oil, and salt — and eschews other ingredients, like preservatives. And once the company cracks the tortilla code, it might roll them out (and up!) at select restaurants and markets, according to the Times.

Tony Merevick is Cities News Editor at Thrillist and dreams of burritos that don't fall apart exactly when you're halfway through them. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @tonymerevick.