Mexican cuisine is a style of food that originated in Mexico. Some dishes have a Spanish or Middle Eastern influence. Mexican cuisine is known for its varied flavors, colorful decoration, and variety of spices and ingredients, many of which are native to the country.
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Mexican cuisine is a style of food that originated in Mexico. Some dishes have a Spanish or Middle Eastern influence. Mexican cuisine is known for its varied flavors, colorful decoration, and variety of spices and ingredients, many of which are native to the country.
National cuisine
When conquistadores arrived in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), they found that the people's diet consisted largely of corn-based dishes with chiles and herbs, usually complemented with beans and tomatoes or nopales. The conquistadores eventually combined their imported diet of rice, beef, pork, chicken, wine, garlic and onions with the native indigenous foods of pre-Columbian Mexico, including chocolate, maize, huitlacoche, tomato, vanilla, avocado, guava, papaya, sapote, mamey, pineapple, soursop, jicama, chile pepper, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanut, achiote, turkey and a local variety of fish.
Corn is its traditional staple grain, but today, rice is equally important and Mexico's rice harvest is abundant. According to food writer Karen Hursh Graber, the initial introduction of rice to Spain from North Africa in the 4th Century led to the Spanish introduction of rice into Mexico at the port of Veracruz in the 1520s. This, Graber says, created one of the earliest instances of the world's greatest fusion cuisines.
In Pueblos or villages, there are also more exotic dishes, cooked in the Aztec or Mayan style (known as comida prehispánica) with ingredients ranging from iguana to rattlesnake, deer, spider monkey, grasshoppers, ant eggs, and other kinds of insects.
Common dishes on a national level
Foods that are part of the Mexican culinary tradition include:
- Common appetizers and side dishes found in Mexican cuisine
- Common main course dishes found in Mexican cuisine
- Common drinks found in Mexican cuisine
- Common desserts and sweets found in Mexican cuisine
Regional cuisine
Central Mexico's cuisine is largely made up of influences from the rest of the country, but also has its authentics, such as barbacoa, pozole, menudo and carnitas.
Southeastern Mexico, on the other hand, is known for its spicy vegetable and chicken-based dishes. The cuisine of Southeastern Mexico also has quite a bit of Caribbean influence, given its geographical location. Seafood is commonly prepared in the states that border the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, the latter having a famous reputation for its fish dishes, a la veracruzana.
