Mexican Recipes
487 recipes found
Pico de Gallo
This recipe is a classic pico de gallo preparation with the exception of the inclusion of two types of spicy chiles, jalapeño and serrano. Their flavors are so different: Jalapeños are much more vegetal and can lean into bell pepper and poblano flavors, while serranos are much sharper, crisp and almost cucumber-like. They complement each other very well, and are used in many Mexican salsas. Serve pico de gallo with empanadas de chipilín or on the side with your favorite tacos or grilled meats.
Empanadas de Chipilín
These empanadas are very common in the food stalls of the mercados and tianguis (open-air market) in the southern state of Chiapas. A plant native to Mexico, chipilín lends its leaves to stews and salsas, and is mixed into corn masa to make tortillas, tamales and empanadas in the country’s center and south. Adding chipilín to masa lends a subtle herbaceousness that complements the earthiness of the corn. If you can’t find it, spinach, chard or kale makes a great substitute.
Taco Seasoning
Skip the powdered, packaged stuff and make your own taco seasoning, adjusting the spices to your family's taste. The recipe below makes enough to season one pound of browned ground beef or chicken (it even works with crumbled tofu), but you can easily double or triple it and store it in airtight container so it's ready to go on a busy weeknight.
Bean and Cheese Burritos
Mexican refried beans are a cinch to make at home on a weeknight thanks to some staple pantry items and a few basic fresh ingredients. Buttery canned pinto beans are perfect in this dish, breaking down into a creamy, silky mixture. (Black beans would also work great.) While the beans are often fried in lard or bacon drippings, this vegetarian version builds flavor with caramelized onion, bell pepper, garlic and smoked paprika instead. Pico de gallo adds a touch of tang to counter the rich beans. Pan-frying the wrapped burritos guarantees a golden, irresistibly crispy exterior and an interior that oozes with melted cheese.
Green Enchilada Sauce
Chile sauces at El Cholo in Los Angeles have changed over its century of operation, as American palates have become more used to “spicier, more flavorful” foods, said Ron Salisbury, the owner, whose grandparents started the restaurant. “So without endangering too much, we added a little more chile." He added, “I felt I was tampering with something sacred.” One of his kitchen jobs as a teenager included seeding chiles, a step that keeps the sauce from becoming too hot and bitter. This sauce, adapted from “A Taste of History: With Authentic El Cholo Recipes” by Ron Salisbury (2020), was created for El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas, but can be used for any enchilada recipe.
Red Enchilada Sauce
Cooks at El Cholo in Los Angeles spend four hours, three times a week, to make each 35-gallon batch of sauce for their enchiladas. “Without the enchilada, we wouldn’t have survived,” said Ron Salisbury, the third-generation owner. Adapted from “A Taste of History: With Authentic El Cholo Recipes” by Ron Salisbury (2020), this sauce was created for El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas but can be used for any enchilada recipe. The mild California chiles, despite their name, come from Mexico, where they are dried in kilns. (Years ago they were sun-dried in fields, giving them a richer flavor, but exposure to birds ended that practice.)
El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas
These chicken-filled, Sonora-style enchiladas have been offered at El Cholo in Los Angeles since it began as the Sonora Café in 1923. They are based on the recipe of Rosa Borquez, who started the restaurant with her husband, Alejandro. Both were born in the Mexican state of Sonora. This dish, with stacked tortillas rather than rolled, is known in Sonora as “enchiladas chatas,” flat enchiladas. Adapted from “A Taste of History: With Authentic El Cholo Recipes” by Ron Salisbury (2020), this recipe includes a chicken stew base with tomatoes, poblano and white pepper, plus a classic red enchilada sauce with smoky dried chiles and a green enchilada sauce with verdant notes from tomatillos, fresh chiles and spinach. A fried egg crowns the top.
Sopa de Albóndigas (Mexican Meatball Soup)
Ask 10 people for a recipe for a particular dish, and you’ll probably get 10 different recipes. Mexican sopa de albóndigas is no exception. Most variations are likely to involve vegetables, rice, a tomato-based broth and, inevitably, meatballs. Wesley Avila, the chef of Guerrilla Tacos in Los Angeles, learned this recipe from his mother, who learned it from her grandmother. His meatballs are hefty in size but light in density, and follow his family’s tradition of adding uncooked white rice to the pork-beef mixture before shaping it into balls and cooking: “My mom always told me that when the rice is done, the soup is ready,” Mr. Avila said. “She used it almost as a timer.” The toppings — piled on as you would atop chili — skew cheffy, but they are entirely optional.
Sonoran-Style Flour Tortillas
In Sonora, a Northern Mexican region where wheat has been cultivated for more than 400 years, tortillas are typically made of flour rather than corn. But unlike the generally lackluster store-bought wrappers most Americans are familiar with, handmade flour tortillas are pliable, chewy, fragrant, and dotted with mahogany blisters. While this recipe, adapted from Teo Diaz and Julia Guerrero of Sonoratown taqueria in downtown Los Angeles, isn’t complicated, it does require allowing some time for the dough to rest. But the investment is worth it. Once you roll out the tortillas and set them on the hot griddle, they’ll begin to puff with steam as they start to brown. When you take a bite, the aroma of sweet flour enveloped in fat will fill your nose and mouth. Finally, you’ll understand that a tortilla is meant to be an essential component rather than just monotextured wrapping paper for tacos, burritos, or chimichangas.
Creamy Queso With Pickled Jalapeños
Queso, the crown jewel of Tex-Mex cuisine, is a creamy, tangy dip made with melted cheese. But it can't be just any cheese. This is one of those rare instances (see also: cheeseburger) where the preferred cheese is good, old-fashioned, highly processed American cheese. Velveeta is tops, but Land O'Lakes and Boar’s Head have deli versions that will do. Kraft singles work, too, but it's a lot of unwrapping. The pickled jalapeños in this recipe aren’t traditional, but they do add some welcome heat and a bit of tang that cut through the richness.
Chivichangas de Machaca (Stewed Brisket and Cheese Chimichangas)
Teo Diaz grew up eating chivichangas, or small burritos typically filled with stewed meat, almost every day in San Luis, Arizona, just miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. His single mother would prepare a dozen or more of them early each morning before heading out to pick and pack produce in the fields of nearby Yuma, wrapping them individually in aluminum foil and leaving them on the counter for her six children to eat throughout the day. Now the chivi, as he calls it, is one of the most beloved items on the menu at his tiny downtown Los Angeles taqueria, Sonoratown. The kitchen is too small for a stove, so he simmers brisket in an industrial-sized rice cooker before shredding it and cooking it a second time with fire-roasted chilies, tomatoes, and heaps of grated cheese. The result, wrapped in a fragrant, chewy handmade tortilla, is perfectly spiced and mouthwateringly unctuous. Everyone will want seconds.
Onion and Tomato Salsa
Frijoles de la Olla
There is nothing that feels more like comfort food than a fresh batch of brothy, tender pinto beans topped with cilantro, jalapeños and avocado, and served with warm tortillas. It’s so simple, yet so filling and delicious. Frijoles de la olla are beans cooked in a pot, and here, that pot is an electric pressure cooker, which makes preparation quicker and even more hands-off. Seasonings like dried chiles, garlic and dried mushrooms take the broth’s flavor to another level. For a spicier version, toss in some chiles de árbol, too. You can swap in dried black or flor de junio beans for an equally delicious and rich broth. Any leftovers would be great in enfrijoladas or chili.
Pineapple Avocado Salsa
A sweet, fruity flavor and a mix of textures set this salsa apart. It goes great with salmon or just about any other fish. This is a sweet, fruity salsa, with a wonderful array of textures: juicy, sweet-acidic pineapple; soft, creamy and subtle avocado; and crisp and refreshing jicama, with everything set off by the heat of the chiles. The avocado gives a pale green cast to the mix. It looks beautiful with salmon and goes with just about any other fish, as well as with chicken or even fajitas.
Tinga de Pollo (Chicken with Chipotle and Onions)
Guadalupe Moreno runs Mi Morena, a tacos de guisado business in the Bay Area, where a number of saucy fillings and toppings are used to mix and match tacos to order. She shared her recipe for tinga de pollo with Leticia Landa and Caleb Zigas for their cookbook "We Are La Cocina." Ms. Moreno's tinga de pollo works perfectly in tacos and also on top of crisp tostadas with lettuce and salsa, inside quesadillas or as a tamal filling. It’s a great way to use up any leftover cooked chicken (just skip straight to step 2), whether pulled from a roast or poached bird, or grocery-store rotisserie.
Cranberry Sauce Salsa
Don't toss that little bit of cranberry sauce leftover from Thanksgiving dinner. This recipe, which we developed for a special kids' edition of The New York Times, calls for making it into a savory-sweet salsa that everyone will love. Just add some chopped fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro and jalapeño to prepared whole cranberry sauce (not the jellied stuff). Stir in some lime zest and juice, and a sprinkling of chile powder, cumin and cayenne. Serve with enchilada pie or tortilla chips, and consider stocking canned cranberry sauce in your cabinet all year long.
Mexican Buñuelos With Piloncillo Syrup
These buñuelos, which are made by deep-frying dough shaped like a disk, are typically eaten year-round as a street food in Mexico. But buñuelos are most popular around the Christmas season when many people make them on Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve. The ingredients in buñuelos vary depending on the region, but this version is adapted from Mely Martínez, a food blogger and the author of “The Mexican Home Kitchen: Traditional Home-Style Recipes That Capture the Flavors and Memories of Mexico.” The dough is rolled out flat, and though it’s not called for here, can be laid on an inverted bowl covered with a pastry cloth or parchment to stretch it even thinner (similar to when women flattened the dough on their knees) to make a crispy, paper-thin buñuelo. The finished buñuelos are topped with granulated sugar and spiced syrup made with cinnamon, anise, orange zest and piloncillo, a raw form of cane sugar.
Albóndigas de la Familia Ronstadt (Ronstadt Family Meatballs)
Fragrant with mint and cilantro and a hit of oregano, these delicate Mexican meatballs have served Linda Ronstadt’s family for generations. They were lunch for her grandfather, or a soup course when the family gathered at her grandparent’s house. The recipe, published in her memoir-cookbook hybrid “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands” (Heyday, 2022), is different from many traditional albóndigas recipes, which use rice or soft vegetables like potatoes or carrots to bind the meatballs. It may seem like the meatball components won’t come together when kneading at first, but stick with it. The poaching liquid becomes a broth, which benefits from skimming off the little bit of foam that appears before serving. A variation of the Ronstadt family meatballs first appeared in The Times in 1989.
Papadzules (Rolled Tortillas With Pumpkin Seed Sauce)
In 1970, Craig Claiborne took a Mexican cooking class at the New York City home of Diana Kennedy, where he learned how to make these papadzules, a Yucatecan dish of rolled tortillas with pepitas (pumpkin seeds). After the death of her husband, Paul Kennedy, a reporter for The New York Times, and with encouragement from editors in New York to write a book, Ms. Kennedy moved to Mexico to record its culinary diversity. As Mr. Claiborne noted in his 1970 article, a coffee grinder works best for puréeing the pepitas here, but the best way to coax the rich oil out of the seeds is by hand. (Tejal Rao)
Chipotle, Peanut and Sesame Seed Salsa
This nutty, spicy salsa with the tang of vinegar is from Veracruz, Mexico, where it’s called salsa macha. It has long been a favorite of Pati Jinich, the Mexican-born chef who lives in Washington, D.C. Her version comes together fast, and offers a lot of character and versatility. Use it to liven up roasted vegetables or grilled meats. It’s especially great on lamb chops and skirt steak, or even baked potatoes served with sour cream and cheese. The salsa lasts for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator; the solids will sink to the bottom, leaving a deeply flavored oil that can add a little muscle to sauces or a finishing touch to other dishes. You can use other nuts in place of the peanuts, or a mix of nuts and sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
Shrimp in Green Mole
There are only three basic steps to making green mole: Whip up a purée of toasted pumpkin seeds, tomatillos and chiles in a blender; sear the purée in oil and cook it until it thickens slightly; then add chicken stock and simmer until the mixture is creamy. Once the sauce is done, you can poach shrimp right in it; it only takes five to eight minutes to cook them in the simmering mole. Better yet, you can make the sauce up to three days ahead and keep it refrigerated until you’re ready to use it, or freeze it (whisk or blend to restore its consistency after thawing).
Spicy Clam Chorizo Pasta
Clams work their way into plenty of dishes in the Baja Peninsula of Mexico, which is where the chef Pati Jinich picked up this recipe for pasta con salsa picante de chorizo y almejas. The dish, which she featured on an episode of her PBS show, “Pati’s Mexican Table,” is a nod to the prized clams that are harvested in and around the coastal lagoons on Mexico’s Pacific shores. It pays homage to the surf-and-turf dishes in Tijuana, where cooks find seemingly endless ways to mix meat and seafood on a single plate. The dish takes its aggressive heat from chorizo and chiles de arbol, but it can be dialed down by substituting 1/2 teaspoon or less of red-pepper flakes. The beer in the dish is Ms. Jinich’s nod to the craft-beer boom in Baja.
Salsa Macha
Salsa macha is a rich chile oil from Veracruz, Mexico, made from variations of dried chiles, garlic, nuts and seeds fried in oil and finely chopped. As a condiment it’s easy to make, and stores well. It’s also incredibly versatile, adding texture and depth to everything it touches, from tacos and fried potatoes to poached eggs or a simple bowl of noodles with herbs. Once you’ve made it once, feel free to adjust the ingredients to suit your taste, playing with the chile varieties, or swapping in different seeds or nuts.
