Mexican cuisine guide
Where it comes from
Mexican cooking rests on nixtamalisation — treating maize with an alkaline solution, a technique thousands of years old that both softens the grain and makes its niacin available. It is the reason maize could sustain civilisations here and caused deficiency disease where it was adopted without the process.
Mexican cuisine was inscribed by UNESCO in 2010. Regional divergence is wide: Oaxacan moles, Yucatecan achiote and citrus, and northern beef and wheat-flour cooking share a national label and little else.
Allergens and dietary needs
The single most common failure on an English-language Mexican menu is treating US Tex-Mex conventions as Mexican ones. Naming the region is the fix.
Chilli varieties are ingredients, not heat levels — ancho, guajillo and chipotle differ in flavour more than in intensity. Corn is the default rather than wheat, which makes many dishes naturally gluten-free and worth flagging, but flour tortillas and some sauce thickeners break that assumption.
Naming it on an English-language menu
Name the region rather than the country: Oaxacan, Yucatecan, Norteño. It sets a far more accurate expectation than “Mexican”, and it distinguishes you from Tex-Mex without having to say so.
Treat chilli varieties as ingredients, not heat ratings — ancho, guajillo and chipotle differ in flavour more than intensity, and naming them tells a guest something a pepper icon cannot.
Staple ingredients
- corn
- beans
- chili
- tomato