Mexican cuisine in our country is only gaining popularity, and not many housewives cook such dishes at home. They will be appreciated by lovers of juicy tastes, meat and vegetables. In this article we will consider the most popular dishes of a sultry country. Cooking them at home is very easy!
Mexican cuisine: what is it?
In the dishes of this Latin American country, the wild flavor of the Aborigines (Mayan and Aztec Indians) and the sophistication of the Europeans, who spent a lot of time here, merge together. This kitchen can easily be called explosive - it is bright, spicy, striking in taste variety. Mexico is very fond of meat and legumes, so they are frequent guests at Latin American tables. The recipes of Mexican cuisine at home are easy to repeat, as they do not require expensive and rare products. And if in your city there is, for example, jalapeno pepper, you can replace it with our usual hot pepper.
How to cook tacos at home?
Juicy minced meat wrapped in a tortilla - tacos is probably the most famous dish from Mexico. How to cook it at home? 400 grams of ground beef need to be fried in a pan, adding salt and pepper. Then add a jar of red beans to the pan along with the fill and 100 grams of chopped ham. Stew for 10 minutes.
In a bowl, mix chopped onion, 3 tomatoes and a bunch of parsley. Salt, pour ketchup and Tabasco sauce.
On a pre-warmed Mexican tortilla (they can be prepared on their own, but easier to buy) put a layer of processed cheese, then hot minced meat, vegetables in the sauce. The cake should be curtailed, and the dish is ready. If you could not find cakes in the store, then replace them with pita bread.
Mexican Recipes: Quesadilla
Chop the onion and fry it in a pan with ground beef (this product is very respected in the country).
Wash, peel and chop the chili peppers and add to the pan. Pour in a jar of canned corn and beans there. Season with coriander, cumin, pepper and salt. Simmer everything under the lid for 10 minutes.
Grate 200 grams of hard cheese. Heat the butter in a frying pan and put tortillas on it, sprinkle with cheese. Then put the filling on the tortilla and again fill it with cheese. Close everything on top with a second cake. The dish needs to be fried on both sides, but do not rush to turn it over. The cheese should melt, otherwise when you try to turn over the quesadilla, the whole filling will spill out.
Serve cakes to the table should be hot. In Mexican cuisine, quesadillas are cooked not only with minced meat, but also with mushrooms, potatoes and even pumpkin flowers.
How to cook tamale?
To prepare tamale, you will need leaves from the ears of corn. If you bought them in dried form, soak them in water overnight. It takes about 20 leaves. If you can’t get this ingredient, replace it with foil or baking parchment. The authenticity of the dish is slightly lost, but the taste does not suffer.
Prepare the dough by mixing 2 cups of cornmeal, 100 grams of butter and salt. Gently pour 1.5 cups of chicken broth into a cool dough, add a little soda and beat until bubbles.
Next, chop some green tomatoes, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 chili peppers and stew them in a pan. Turn the stewed vegetables into mashed potatoes using a blender. Add a little cilantro and bring to a boil. Cook for 20 minutes, then add the chopped chicken breast.
Put a little dough on the corn leaf and spread it. Then put the filling - tomato mixture with chicken - and tie a leaf like stuffed cabbage. Tamale is steamed for an hour. As a result, the dough should quickly move away from the sheet (or parchment).
All products in tamale are interchangeable: if you do not have green tomatoes, then replace them with red or even tomato paste, you can use turkey or fish instead of chicken.
Mexican vegetable stew
Latin American cuisine is not only about meat dishes, a vegetarian also has something to eat. Juicy multi-colored stew is a vivid example of this.
To start, prepare the vegetables: wash 2 carrots, 6 potatoes, 2 onions, 1 bell pepper and pumpkin (better than Hokkaido). Dice everything. Then chop several cloves of garlic and chili peppers (the amount of these ingredients depends on how much you like hot).
In a deep pan, add the vegetables and sauté them. Pumpkin should be put last. Then add a can of canned tomatoes and two glasses of water. Simmer for 20 minutes. When the stew is almost ready, pour a jar of beans into it. Add salt and spices that you like. Finished vegetable stew can be decorated with parsley leaves.
Mexico's most meat dish - fajitos
It will take 1 kg of beef, cut into small pieces. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of honey, seasoning (chili, cumin, pepper) and a little vegetable oil with chopped garlic. In a hot marinade, put the meat and leave for several hours.
Drain the marinade from the beef into a pan, add onion rings and straws of bell pepper to it. Stew for 15 minutes. Place the meat on a baking sheet covered with parchment and bake at maximum capacity in the oven.
Place the finished beef with vegetables in a pan and cook for about 5 minutes. This Mexican dish should be spread on plates of Chinese cabbage leaves or tortillas.
The famous chili con carne soup
Chili con carne (often just chili) is a dish often cooked in Mexico and Texas. Now dozens of variations of this soup are known, but they all differ in the spiciness, piquancy and depth of shades of taste. Now we will talk about the most popular recipe for making chili.
We start the Mexican dish (the photo of which is presented here) by frying the chopped onion. Then add half a kilogram of ground beef to the pan and bring to half-preparedness. Meanwhile, we cook chicken broth with bay leaves and allspice.
Pour a jar of canned beans into the minced meat and simmer for three minutes. Then the minced meat and beans are moved to a saucepan with broth. Pour three glasses of tomato juice there, put a little salt and red pepper. Even in this soup you need to add a spoonful of cocoa and mix. Cook for another hour and serve.
If desired, chili con carne can be cooked in a slow cooker. In this case, the onion and minced meat are fried in the "Baking" mode, and the rest of the cooking is in the "Stew" mode.
How to cook enchiladas?
Enchiladas is another tortilla-based Mexican dish. They (along with beans and minced meat) are very popular in the country. A rare dish dispenses with these ingredients.
Take 30 grams of butter and rub it in your hands with a glass of flour. Pour in 70 ml of warm water gradually until you get a sufficiently elastic dough. Divide the resulting dough into 4 parts, and roll out each of them with a rolling pin into a thin tortilla cake. Fry the cakes on both sides for about two minutes. The pan must be dry, no oil is required. Transfer the finished cakes to a damp towel: so they will not dry out while you are preparing the filling.
Fry the onion, 200 grams of ground beef and several mushrooms in a pan. Add some paprika, salt, zira, tabasco sauce and half a glass of tomato sauce. Add a little water and simmer for 20 minutes.
Put a filling in each cake and roll it with a roll. Put everything in a baking sheet and pour in tomato sauce, sprinkle with cheese and bake for 20 minutes.
In the article we examined the most popular recipes of Mexican cuisine with a photo. They will perfectly help to understand the culture and character of hot Mexicans, besides, the dishes themselves are very tasty.