What Makes a Great Carne Asada Burrito?.

Almost every taqueria sells one, and most of them are fine. The difference between fine and excellent comes down to four things: char on the beef, a tortilla that met heat, salsa with acid in it, and restraint with the rice. Everything else is preference.

1. The beef has to be grilled, and grilled hot

Carne asada means grilled meat. The cut is usually skirt or flap steak — flap (ranchera) is the common one in California — marinated in citrus, garlic, salt and often a little chilli, then cooked fast over high heat so the outside chars while the inside stays pink.

The thing to look for is colour variation. Great asada is not uniformly brown. It has dark, almost black edges from the grill, lighter meat between them, and visible bits of rendered fat. Uniformly grey-brown beef means it was cooked on a flat-top at a low temperature or, worse, cooked earlier and steamed back to warmth in a pan.

The second thing is the chop. Asada should be cut into pieces small enough to distribute through the burrito but large enough to still be steak. When it is chopped to a mince, the char goes everywhere and stops registering anywhere.

2. The tortilla should be soft because of heat, not steam

A flour tortilla needs to be warmed to fold without cracking. There are two ways to do that. On a dry comal it puffs slightly, takes on a few brown spots, and gains a faint toasted flavour. In a steamer or microwave it becomes floppy and slightly damp, and tastes of nothing.

You can usually tell after one bite. A comal-heated tortilla has structure — it resists slightly and then gives. A steamed one tears and goes gummy against the wet fillings.

The best taquerias also griddle the finished burrito seam-side down for a few seconds. It seals the fold and adds one more layer of toast.

3. The salsa has to do work

A burrito that big needs acid, or the whole thing reads as heavy. That is the salsa's job, and it matters more than the heat level.

• Salsa roja made from dried or roasted chillies brings smoke and depth.
• Salsa verde from tomatillos brings the sourness that cuts fat best.
• Pico de gallo brings texture and raw onion bite, but less acid than it looks like it should.

The tell for a serious taqueria is a salsa bar with more than two options and at least one that tastes of something other than heat. If every salsa on offer is simply hot, the kitchen is treating salsa as a garnish rather than an ingredient.

4. Rice and beans should be doing less than you think

Rice is filler, and there is a reason the San Diego build leaves it out entirely — see California burrito vs. Mission burrito. In a burrito with rice, the good version uses a modest amount, seasoned, and beans that were actually cooked rather than scooped from a can and heated.

A useful measure: pick the burrito up. If it feels dense and uniform, it is mostly rice. If you can feel the meat as distinct weight inside, the ratio is right.

The small things that separate the top few

• Guacamole made from avocados, not from a bag. Bagged guacamole is smooth, uniformly green, and tastes faintly of lime and nothing else.
• Cheese that melts against the meat rather than sitting cold in a stripe.
• The burrito is assembled to order, not pre-rolled and held under a lamp.
• It is not leaking. A burrito that comes apart in the foil was overfilled, which is a sign of generosity but also of poor construction.

What does not matter as much as people think

Size does not correlate with quality — a larger burrito usually means more rice. Neither does whether the taqueria is a shack or a sit-down restaurant. And a restaurant's overall star rating tells you almost nothing here, because it is aggregating opinions about parking, service and every other item on the menu.

That last point is why Forkelo scores dishes and not restaurants. The best carne asada burritos in the South Bay are ranked on what people said about the burrito itself, and there is a separate list for San Jose specifically.

If you want to know what else the meat can be, read carnitas vs. carne asada.