If you are from a Spanish speaking country, or a recent immigrant, or someone who knows a lot about food from Spanish speaking countries, what kind of sides do you eat at home other than rice and beans? I’ve seen a ton of recipe suggestions online, but they seem kinda American influenced more than anything else. And no, I am not talking about what sides you eat with burgers or pizza, but what you eat when you eat more traditional foods from your area.
I am a Hispanic person whose family has been in Texas for about 100 years or so. I eat a lot of rice and beans when I eat Tex-Mex food at home. Even when I go to Tex-Mex restaurants it is pretty much the same- rice, beans, and a small salad.
When I was a kid, my mom would sometimes do corn, squash, or corn and squash with tomato sauce. We had fideo now and then (thin pasta with tomato sauce).
I lived with a bunch of Mexican immigrants when I was a teenager.
I don’t remember there being a whole lot of sides. Everything came in the form of “stew” with veggies thrown in.
There was ALWAYS a big pot of beans in the fridge. We’d eat beans at night and in the morning “mom” would throw a bunch in a cast iron pan and get to mash’n.
Bean burritos for breakfast and bean burritos for lunch. LOL
Mole comes to mind its a sauce with ground chiles and chocolate served with meat. birria is similar to chili made with beef, pork, young goat, or chicken. Lengua tacos most people in Mexico eat corn not flour tortillias. Atole is a drink made from masa harina and usually sweetened with fruit and sometimes chocolate. I lived in Mexico for 3 years abd if you’re really interested and want authentic recipes with a look behind everything food, restuarents ect and travel you’ll enjoy this site.
Spanish from Spain, Europe: Completely different. Rice and beans are mostly main dishes (for rice see paella, of course, but also the manyversions of arrozcaldoso - the links are in Spanish). Beans as side dish are mostly green beans in my experience/family. Side dishes were potatoes in all variations (puree, chips, fried, backed…), vegetables (artichockes, aubergines, spinach, peppers, courgettes, green peas…) and salads.
Sounds more European than South American to me. No baked beans or fríjoles at home or in my school.
Lot of Caribbean hispanics at a few of my previous jobs that I was ‘work friends’ with and ate at their homes. I would say plantains [discovered I love tostones enough to learn to make them] arepas [like them, but I don’t really make them] yucca done several ways [mashed, fried like hash browns, like french fries and chunks stewed]
Our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Arizona – serving Sonoran cuisine – offers four sides with their dishes, ‘refried’ beans (frijoles refritos), black beans (more or less intact), ‘Spanish’ rice, and fideo, vermicelli with tomato sauce and chili powder. I’ve seen it as sopa de fideo but the restaurant’s side is not nearly loose enough to be soup but rather like the picture in the recipe – just a token amount of cheese though, like a garnish.
I’m Puerto Rican and came in here to say exactly this, except without the arepas. We also had guineos, which are cooking bananas but aren’t plantains, and batatas which I’m just finding out right now are white sweet potatoes but don’t taste like 'em. But we mostly ate rice and beans.
I also ate a lot of cerviche, fish, shrimp, roasted corn. Sweet tamales masa with pineapple or whatever fruit in season. Flan, tunad which are prickley pear fruit. I still eat those. Verduga which is wild porchalaca a common weed here in the US. Its very good also prickley pear cactus which is boiledcto remove the slime then sautaed with onion and scrambled with eggs. Fresh coconuut and the water. Every morning I would walk to the plaza and get any kind of fruit or vegetable juice mix or straight up made right then. The rotisserie chicken with adobo sauce that seasoned the potatoes underneath mmmmm. It came with macaroni salad and tortillias. Oh and lamb lotsa lamb ie borrego (sp). Oh and the ahogaddos (sp). A smothered pork sandwich served on a bollio with the most wonderful sauce. Grass fed beef was the norm
And Argentinan beef as well Chihuahuan and
Beef from Sonora. Pickled onions always on hand.
For all those that mentioned potatoes, it triggered a memory of my Mexican born grandmother making these chunky hash browns with our breakfast tacos (you would put the hash browns in the taco). Never knew if that was “Tex” or the “Mex.”
Another thing I thought of was coleslaw. In Texas, a lot of people put that on or with their fish tacos or fried fish in Mexican restaurants. Don’t know what they do in Mexico.
My wife is from Argentina and have also lived there for a while. In Buenos Aires area most sides were salad or potato based for the meat dishes , and salad as a side for the pasta dishes along with plenty of bread.
Beans ended up in stews and spicy food was not a thing , although becoming more popular.