Teach me about Mexican food

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, confession time: Despite living in Southern California for over thirty years, I know diddly-squat about Mexican food. Sure, I can identify Spanish rice and tacos at twenty paces, but that’s about it – once we start venturing into burritos and carnitas and quesadeas, I get lost. I tried edjumakatin’ myself on the internet, but all I could find were either sites with recipies (I just want to eat, not cook) or “dictionary” pages that contradict each other.

So, how about setting me straight on what’s what in Mexican food? What’s what, how is it made, what do you recommend, what should I avoid, that sort of stuff?

2

mmmmm mexican food.

First thing to do is find yourself a little mom and pop place, and then sample their dishes. Some of my favorites:

Chile Colorado - meat (usually beef) simmered in a tomato and red chili sauce, just eat it up with tortillas
Chile Verde - pork cooked in a green chili and tomatills sauce (tomatillos are sort of related to green tomatoes but not really like them in taste).

A good Carne Asada burrito will do you good too. A marinated chunk of steak (usually flank steak) that’s char grilled and sliced up and paired with guac, pico and some rice and beans.

If you can find a good Chile Relleno they rock too. Usually an anaheim green chili, roasted and peeled, stuffed with cheese and dipped in an egg batter and fried until crispy outside and gooey inside.

If you want to sample some of the best mexican food has to offer try the a-la carte dishes and stay away from the "combo #1 variety… the other items have the best flavors usually.

Also if you can find a little tiny taqueria where some old mexican grandmother handmakes the tortillas and tamales… remember where it is because you’ve found the gateway to heaven.

3

I think I can provide a starting point, at least.

Burrito: uses a flour tortilla and the filling is generally mostly rice and beans (I’ve also seen potato). You will find beef, chicken and pork as fillings. The ends of the tortilla is tucked inside. If you then fry a burrito, it becomes a chimichanga.

Taco: Tacos can be made with corn or flour tortillas and can be hard or soft. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crispy flour tortilla though. You can put anything in a taco and call it a taco. I think it’s basically like a “sandwich” Not seen everywhere in the U.S is the delightful “Taco al Pastor” which is pork meat in a soft corn tortilla with cilantro and onion and maybe a squeeze of lime.

Tamale: Made from a Corn dough that surrounds a filling. The Tex-Mex filllings are generally beef, chicken or pork. They are cooked in corn husks. Please remove the corn husk before eating.

Barbacoa: I believe this is essentially barbecued cows head. I’ve seen it as just regular ol’ beef. It is stringy, not crumbly, like the beef in Taco Bell.

Gordita: I believe a gordita is made with corn dough like the the tamale, but it is shaped like a taco. Dunno much about the fillings.

Enchilada: I believe these are primarily Tex-Mex. Flour tortillas filled with usually beef, cheese or chicken, in a red sauce, topped with cheese and baked.

Salsa: Sauce. Usually tomato based (with onions, peppers, and all sorts of stuff). You can find chunky versions, green versions and all sorts. It doesn’t have to be red and soupy.

Guacamole: crushed avocado’s with cilantro, onions and chies.

Some of the other fillings you might find are fish, cabrito (goat).

4

Well, first off stay away from any chain, and any restaurant with “Taco” in the name. Find some little hole-in-the-wall place with a chalkboard menu and homework piled on a back booth. That means it is family-owned, and Mama is likely running the kitchen. Then just work your way through the menu, or ask what Mama recommends. Look for Mexican soda on the menu instead of Coke/Pepsi.

A good way to find this sort of place is to ask your Mexican friends or co-workers. Ask where they eat, and what they like on the menu.

Side notes:

“Cabrito” = goat. Not a warning…a recommendation! :smiley:

“Menudo” = tripe soup. **Warning! ** Do not eat!!! No matter what they say, or who urges you to do so with promises of sexual power or hangover cure. (But seeing it on the menu is a good sign. It signifies “seriousness-of-intent”.)

5

hmmm…que otro? You know, everytime I hear mariachi music I get a craving for mexican food? I’m Pavlovian that way.

Albondigas Soup is a delicious, hearty soup made with meatballs and vegetables. Sometimes spicy.

Huevos Rancheros - over easy eggs covered with salsa, a side of rice and beans and corn tortillas. Great for hangovers!

6

Nope. Enchiladas have corn tortillas. Mmmmm, cheese…

I’ll add to the list;

Chalupa: Flat crunchy corn shell (crunchy taco rolled flat) toped with lettuce, bean, cheese, and sometimes meat. Not what Taco Bell calls a chalupa.

Fajitas: A variety of your own toppings (meat, chese, veggies) served with flour tortillas so you can assemble your own taco/burrito. Steak strip fajitas are very popular.

Quesadilla: Kinda like a mexican grilled cheese sandwich. Two flat tortillas with cheese and other yummies inside.

Chimichanga: A fried burrito.

Queso: alternately called “chili con queso” , Cheese dip with chilis. Excellent if eaten with flour tortillas instead of the usual toritlla chips.

Pica de gallo: A kind of relish made with tomatos, onions, and cilantro. Different from salsa in that it’s not a sauce.

Sopapillas: Ther was a recent Cafe Society thread about these. Lumps of dough that have been deep-fried to form a puffy bubble and eaten with honey and butter.

OK, there’s obviously a lot more but that all I can think of off the top of my head.

7

Bah! Menudo is good! Although I will admit that it smells nasty when cooking. If you really can’t get around the tripe, try pozole, which uses a similar soup base but with pork instead of tripe.

Cesos is beef brains. Never tried it before, and with the mad cows running around I’m sure as hell not gonna try it now. Besides, my mom uses brains to tan leather (it’s a Native Ameican method), so I’m not inclined to think of the stuff as food. Plus it’s brains for Og’s sake. I’m not a zombie.

Flautas and taquitos are similar - a little bit of filling on a tortilla, rolled into a narrow tube and baked or lightly fried. I’m not sure what the difference is.

(Frijoles) refritos are refried beans, traditionally made with pork fat.

Tostada is basically a taco salad, served in a bowl-shaped tortilla shell.

8

Thanks for asking this question BurnMeUp.

I’m also confessing I don’t know a chalupa from a burrito. Last time I went to a Mexican restaurant, I ordered an enchalada with lettuce and tomato. I thought it was like a taco, sorta.

The man gave me a really weird look and walked away. I got my enchalada with a huge side bowl of lettuce and another huge bowl of tomatoes. It was really good.

9

What, ain’t you never et at Taco Bell? :dubious:

OK, as you know, that isn’t real Mexican food. Why not?

  1. Real Mexican cheese is totally different. It’s light in color and crumbly.
  2. Those totillas don’t have that fresh-ground maize flavor.
  3. That “sauce” isn’t like a real Mexican salsa.
  4. The meat is just like hamburger meat; the seasoning is all wrong.

Etc. etc. Real Mexican food is a true cuisine, and it isn’t just tacos, as the other posters are pointing out.

Not that anyone here (incl. the OP) was claiming Taco Bell (and similar joints) to be the real deal–just pointing out the obvious. The cheese thing is really important, though.

10

Ahem. Tito’s Tacos on Washington (the northern one) and Sepulveda is great!

Menudo is good! Of course, it depends on where you get it. And Sundays are the best. If you want to try menudo without spending a lot of money, the canned stuff is okay. (Strangely, I can’t remember the brand name right now; but they’ve been making it in their L.A. factory for like half a century.) Get some cilantro and chopped onions for it, and add it just before you eat it. Squeeze in some fresh lemon and dip your flour tortillas in it.

Flour vs. corn tortilla?

Although many Mexican restaurants serve it in the big fried shell, I think that they are traditionally served on a fried corn tortilla.

rjung: Where in SoCal? I like a place in Orange called The Chili Pepper. Do yourself a favour and try their chipotle salmon, which is often on special.

11

Pico de gallo is a type of salsa. (In some parts of Mexico, there also is a soup dish by the same name.) When you go to a Mexican restaurant and get tortilla chips, they are generally served with red salsa (pico de gallo) and green salsa (salsa verde.) Pico de gallo is made of tomatoes, onion, hot peppers, cilantro, and lime juice, salt, and pepper. It should be served fresh and is far better than any of that oversalted, chemically crap in jars masquerading as salsa. Salsa verde is similar, but made with tomatillos (which look like green tomatoes, but are actually more closely related to gooseberries) instead of tomatoes, and has a pleasantly tart and lively flavor.

Menudo, when done well, is very good. Most Mexican restuarants I’ve been to only serve this on weekends.

Fajitas originally refer to a type of meat – specifically skirt steak (arrachera). The traditional way of preparing fajitas is to marinate the steak in lime juice add some salt and grill it. It’s very simple and very good. You can serve it with an assortment of toppings, but that’s what it is at its basic. These days, fajitas can be also made from chicken, pork, etc…

Napoles: These are prickly pear paddles. Served either pickled, boiled, or grilled as an accompaniment (they go well with fajitas.)

Tamales: Corn masa (made by slaking corn with lime [calcium oxide]) stuffed with meat/vegetables/fish, wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves and steamed. Actually, the old Aztek method of cooking meat in husks or banana leaves is what makes a tamale a tamale.

Corn tortillas: Corn masa pressed thinly and fried

Corn tortilla chips: Above, cut in quarters, and deep-fried.

Chorizo: A Mexican (and Spanish) sausage heavily spiced with pork, garlic, powdered chiles. Usually sold fresh, but can occassionaly be found smoked & dried.

The most important flavorings in Mexican cooking are usually: pork fat (although that’s changing), chiles, Mexican oregano (this tastes substantially different from Mediterranean oregano. I would not use it interchangeably), cinnamon (NOT the sharper, more bitter cassia, which is what most American cinnamon is), cumin, lime, garlic, onion, tomato. and cilantro (“coriander” for you UK speakers).

A good place to start learning about Mexican cuisine is to pick up any of several cookbooks written by Zarela Martinez.

12

Having a Mexican DIL, I can say that not all the food is what the chains in this country serve. She made barbacoa once, and it was cow’s tongue, slow-cooked and actually tasty.

Then there is a dish (which I can’t think of the name of off the top of my “American” head) which is quite tasty and begins with cutting up some tortillas. Either corn or flour, doesn’t matter. Add some eggs after the tortillas have “crisped” up a bit, and some onion, salsa and cheese. Makes a very tasty brunch or dinner (if you’re so inclined) entree!!

Side question: What is the soup called that is very thin and dark red and contains a little meat (possibly chicken) and garbanzo beans (chickpeas)??

13

Sorry - the above cut up tortillas are fried in oil. :smack:

14

That’s not pico de gallo in Texas. Pico de gallo is the same ingredients but coarsely chopped up instead of being made into a sauce. Red salsa is just salsa, much heavier on the tomatoes and purreed so it’s saucy.

15

I’ve always made pico de gallo in a molcajete (Mexican mortar & pestle.) It is chunkier than your average jarred salsa, but it is smashed up. Definitely not blended, though, so perhaps we’re talking about the same thing.

16

Here’s a recipe with an image. It’s definitely just choppd up and not ground. But, the majority of Mexican places in Texas are Tex-Mex. Maybe it’s different for interior Mexican…

17

The stuff I know as pico de gallo (and what is sold in Mexican groceries around here as such) is somewhere between that, and really saucy salsa. It definitely has chunks chopped tomatoes and onions in it, but some are lightly crushed to give it a saucier consistency. This is closer to the consistency seen around here.

But I suspect that pico de gallo has a zillion variations, some saucier, some drier. I don’t always crush my tomatoes, either, and do come up with something with a texture as seen in your photo. However,I use in the way most Americans would use salsa: with tortilla chips, and most Mexicans I know translate it as such for the benefit of the Spanish-impaired.

18

(By the way, I do realize my link is to “Italian style” pico de gallo [what the heck is that, anyway?], but there a derth of pico de gallo images on the web.)

19

General Questions is for questions with factual answers. IMHO is for opinions and polls.

Off to IMHO.

DrMatrix - GQ Moderator

20

There are two authors I would really recommend to you:
Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy.

Both write about Mexican food and culture with a lot of love and respect and what I have seen thus far is pretty spot on. Rick Bayles had a series (and a book) called something like Mexico, one plate at a time.

One thing you need to know about Mexico (the food and the culture) is that it is highly varied, almost as much as the US. The food from the North is different from that along the coast, etc. It is really hard to ‘tell you about Mexican food’ in a post.

That said, Tex-Mex is based on Northern Mexican food (well, duh!:)).

I’ll go over some of the food mentioned, but keep in mind that my family is from Chihuahua and my answers may be different from someone else’s.

taqueria- most of the ones I have visited (primarily in California) are pretty far removed from true Mexican cooking. They tend to be very americanized, even the ‘mom and pop’ ones.

burritos- contrary to what is sold at taquerias, burritos are generally small and have one filling. They are not the size of a small baby, nor do they have rice, beans, meat, lettuce, etc. There is no one standard filling. Common fillings include: eggs/potato, bean, chile verde, lengua (tongue), chile colorado, etc. I have never seen a burrito in Mexico, however, stuffed with rice.

Chile Relleno- typically made with aneheim chiles in Northern Mexico, but many other areas of mexico use poblano chiles.

Tamales - Christmas food. To me, eating tamales in July is as weird as eating a full course thanksgiving dinner in May. Typically tamales are savory but there are several sweet styles. Tamal is singular. Tamales is plural. ‘One Tamale’ is not gramatically correct. Typically wrapped in corn husks but in other countries banana leaves are used.

Napales - taste kind of like slimey green beans. Taste great with scrambled eggs.

Menudo - tastes great and is a really popular dish, especially on Sunday Mornings. In the north, it served with chopped onions, mexican oregano, lime wedges and bolillos, a white roll.

Tortilla chips - nowhere near as popular in Mexico as they are in the US.

Pico de gallo - to me, it’s chopped. It’s like an assemblage of the ingredients as opposed to a puree.

There are also a lot of salsas. A LOT. Typically, the heat people associate with Mexican food is in the salsas. This way each person can heat up their food accordingly.

Ceviche is a seafood cocktail in which the fish is marainated in lime juice and not cooked.

Raw vegetables and fruit are often served cut up, drizzeled with lime juice and sprinkled with chile powder. Cucumbers, Jicamas, coconuts, oranges, pineapple.

Limes are really popular in general. The limes used are more like key limes, however.
Mexican beer tastes great with lime and a dash of salt.

‘aides’ are very popular and go under the name ‘aguas frescas’. Popular varieties include melon, hibiscus, tamarind, and horchata (a rice drink).

Capirutada (I am sure I am mispelling it) is a bread pudding served at Easter.

There are also a lot of stews and soups.

I could go on and on…