Tex-Mex Recipes

A San Antonio Conversation in Two Languages

Tex-Mex is the cuisine that emerged when Mexican grandmothers cooked for Texan families across San Antonio, Laredo, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley in the late 1800s. It is not Mexican food simplified for American palates. It is its own regional cuisine, with its own canon, its own rules, and its own century-long evolution. Yellow cheese instead of queso fresco. Ground beef in the taco shell because that was what was in the freezer. Wheat-flour tortillas in North Texas because the ranchers grew wheat, corn tortillas south of San Antonio because that was the older tradition. Chili con carne as a Texan invention, codified at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago where the San Antonio Chili Stand became a national curiosity.

The cuisine works in layers. Beef and cheese enchiladas with the heavy, chili-gravy sauce that defines the Tex-Mex enchilada from its interior Mexican cousin. Poblano chicken enchiladas for the lighter weeknight version that still respects the chile foundation. Taco-stuffed bell peppers for the weeknight-but-not-tacos compromise. Texas trash dip for the bean-and-cheese baked dish that every San Antonio house party serves on a folding table next to a bag of Fritos. Texas Roadhouse ranch dip for the steakhouse-bridge dip that crossed over from BBQ joint to Tex-Mex table sometime in the 1990s.

Chef Mia's editorial principle for the Tex-Mex collection is the same as the rest of the site. Every recipe has been tested at least twice in her Lockhart home kitchen. Every ingredient comes from a standard grocery store, not a specialty Mexican market, because the cuisine itself was built on what San Antonio Tex-Mex housewives could get at the corner store. The Ultimate Tex-Mex Recipes Guide walks through the deeper history and technique theory.