Cuisine guide
Mexican
recipes.
Mexican cuisine — recognised by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — is one of the oldest continuous food traditions on earth. The pre-Columbian foundation is the Mesoamerican triad of corn, beans, and squash, joined by chillies and tomatoes; the colonial overlay added pork, dairy, wheat, citrus, and the techniques of Spanish-Catholic kitchens; the modern wave borrowed from French pâtisserie, Lebanese tacos al pastor (yes, really), and Asian-Pacific influence in Baja seafood. The restaurant-Mexican-food most non-Mexicans know is a thin slice; the real cuisine is regional in a way that puts even Italy to shame.
Recipes from Mexican
6 dishes to cook from
The shape of the cuisine
Three pillars to anchor what you cook.
Corn
Nixtamalised corn — masa — is the foundation. Tortillas, tamales, sopes, gorditas, huaraches, chalupas: all variations on dough made from corn that's been simmered with cal (calcium hydroxide), which unlocks niacin and changes the flavour. Modern Mexican cooks increasingly grind their own masa from heritage corn.
Salsas and moles
Mexican cuisine has hundreds of distinct salsas — fresh, charred, dried-chilli-based, tomatillo-based, smoked, fermented. Mole is a category, not a single sauce: mole poblano, mole negro, mole verde, mole amarillo, mole rojo, mole de olla. Some moles take three days and use thirty ingredients.
Regional anchors
Yucatecan (Mayan-Lebanese fusion, citrus marinades, banana-leaf wraps); Oaxacan (the 'land of seven moles'); Pueblan (the home of mole poblano); coastal Veracruz (Spanish-Mediterranean fusion); Norteño (beef, wheat tortillas, dry rubs).
Staple ingredients
The pantry you'll want.
Heirloom corn (and masa harina if you can't grind), dried chillies (ancho, guajillo, pasilla, chipotle, mulato, morita), pinto and black beans, tomatillos, white onion, garlic, cilantro, epazote, Mexican oregano, cumin, achiote, lime, queso fresco, crema.
You don't need everything at once. Build the pantry over a few months as recipes call for it; most of these are shelf-stable and useful across cuisines.
Core techniques
A few moves to learn well.
- Toasting and rehydrating dried chillies before blending
- Charring tomatoes and tomatillos directly over a flame for salsa
- Nixtamalisation — soaking corn in alkaline water — for proper masa
- Frying in lard rather than vegetable oil for traditional flavour