Authentic Mexican Recipes

slothmeister

slothmeister

slothmeister

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21 Feb 2006
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Southampton, UK
Afternoon all,

We have an amazing mexican restaurant near us which is one of our favourites to visit and will try and go once a month, we've since come to the conclusion that we love proper rich, flavourful mexican food, not just your generic Tex Mex stuff that you can rustle up easily and we're planning a food tour in Mexico for my wife's 40th.

All that said, I'd like to try and recreate some proper tasty mexican food at home, we use Mexigrocer to get hold of the chillis and other bits that aren't available in normal supermarkets, im hoping to find some authentic recipes that are tried and tested, does anyone have any that they can recommend?

Things like Birria, Mole poblano, Carne Asada, Chilaquiles, Gorditas etc.
 
I haven't found one single website that provides lots of great recipes, though Ethan Chlebowski came up with some interesting ones following a spell living in Mexico https://www.ethanchlebowski.com/search?q=mexican

The challenge as well is finding something with the right balance of complex vs overly simplified - e.g. if something expects you to buy fresh poblanos and assumes you have 28 varieties of tortilla in your local shop that might be a struggle, vs the miserable BBC recipes that treat a jalapeno as something to be scared of.

I tend to search specific recipes and then trawl through mostly American websites until I find something that's reasonably balanced in terms of its ingredient and time expectations (e.g. I'm not making fresh tortillas by mashing up corn). Also, if you've not come across this before, you'll have to learn certain lessons, such as US chili powder being a totally different ingredient to UK chili powder. Though the more authentic ones would skip that anyway and go for dried chilis blitzed.
 
www.seriouseats.com

Cochinita Pibil (Yucatán-Style Barbecued Pork) Recipe

Make Yucatán-style cochinita pibil with a zippy marinade, banana leaves, and a grill to reproduce the sweet, earthy flavors traditionally gained by cooking in an underground oven.
www.seriouseats.com www.seriouseats.com

I've made this before and it's pretty good, annatto/achiote is mostly a colouring but you can get it quite easily, bannana leaves can often be found frozen in Asian markets. Otherwise it doesn't use any particularly hard to find ingredients.

Elote is another great one to make at home, cotija cheese can be dificult to find but feta makes a passable replacement. Otherwise it can be customised to suit your tastes.

Sauces are also a good shout, salsa rojo, salsa verde etc. Fresh tomatillos can be hard to find but tinned are fairly readily available and work ok.

Roasted tomato/pepper salse like this is great, I use something similar quite often as a side or part of a dish.
 
Looks like I forgot to post the source for those. The Book of Latin American Cooking - Elisabeth Ortiz. It has loads of Mexican stuff in and is well worth the £2.50 cost second hand on Amazon.
 
gingergundog said:
Search out some Thomasina Miers recipes, I think she simplifies some dishes but tries to keep it fairly authentic.
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We have one of her books and really like cooking from it. However I was slightly put off when my Mexican colleague called her Wahaca restaurants “white people Mexican food” :p

I’m not in the country at the moment but when I’m back I’ll ask her for cookbook recommendations.

I have cooked the Serious Eats chilli verde and carnitas quite a few times. Carnitas especially.
 
Scam said:
We have one of her books and really like cooking from it. However I was slightly put off when my Mexican colleague called her Wahaca restaurants “white people Mexican food” :p

I’m not in the country at the moment but when I’m back I’ll ask her for cookbook recommendations.

I have cooked the Serious Eats chilli verde and carnitas quite a few times. Carnitas especially.
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Haha yeah I'm not surprised its viewed that way.

+1 on the SE Carnitas. RecipeTinEats is a good option too.
 
Joshua Weissman has a pretty incredible quesabirria recipe, the issue with proper mexican is you end up spending the same cost of a dinner out on different dried chillis as they just seem so expensive over to get a hold of them. Another voucher for the SE carnitas too, I've made both the normal and the sousvide of that and with sous vide it pretty heavily absorbs the orange and cinamon flavouring so maybe go a bit easier on those
 
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