10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mexican Food

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mexican Food

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mexican Food

The first nachos reportedly hail from Piedras Negras, Mexico, where in 1943 Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, a panicked maître d'hôtel, rummaged through his restaurant’s pantry hoping to please a hungry group of army wives who had just wandered in. Anaya reportedly “threw together whatever food he could find in the kitchen that ‘consisted of near canapes of tortilla chips, cheese, and jalapeno peppers.’” His somewhat unorthodox cheese of choice? Wisconsin cheddar.

Not all moles employ chocolate: The most popular in America, mole poblano, hails from Puebla, but Oaxaca, Mexico, is known as the land of the seven moles, and only a few of those complex, delicious sauces use chocolate. Among them are a yellow (amarillo) mole, a red (colorado) mole, and a green (verde) mole.

Mexican hot chocolate is often served without milk, especially in Oaxaca, and is simply chocolate foamed up with hot water. Cooks sometimes use a unique-looking spinning foaming tool, called a molinillo, that looks sort of like a rustic ancestor of the whisk.

The “ancient Aztec meal of corn dough wrapped in leaves and steamed were once relegated to special occasions, even in Mexican restaurants,” reports a fascinating New York Times piece. Proof? “A history of the Aztecs written in the 16th century by Bernardino de Sahagún, a priest, tells of tamales stuffed with fruit, honey, even bees.” Yikes!

According to the Smithsonian, the history of the margarita is actually slightly fraught. There are three primary contenders for the tipsy title: Tijuana’s Carlos "Danny” Herrera (1938), wealthy Dallas socialite Margarita Sames (1948), and José Cuervo itself. The first batch of the spirit imported into the U.S. (1945) featured the tagline “Margarita: it’s more than a girl’s name."

There are two theories about chalupas, the fried thick tortillas topped with salsa, shredded meat, chopped onion, and sometimes queso fresco. One is that they date back to Colonial times, when Spanish settlers washed their clothes in the San Francisco river, and women carried laundry to the river in big baskets made of wood called chalupas. (Afterwards they’d dash home to fry up tortillas in lard and top them with meat for dinner.) The second theory goes, per the Smithsonian, “that they are named after the Aztec boats (chalupas) used in the ancient city of Tenochtitlan.” So take your pick! While eating a chalupa.

According to one historian, the word “taco” dates to the 18th century in Mexico, and referred to the little charges miners used to excavate ore from mines. Tacos “were pieces of paper that they would wrap around gunpowder and insert into the holes they carved in the rock face.” By the end of the 19th century, the term tacos de minero — miner’s tacos — was seen in archives and dictionaries.

News you can use: You can easily make your own elote, that street corn that looks so magical and delicious but truly only boils down to chili powder, cheese, and lime, at home. And if you don’t have the cotija the recipe calls for, use Parmesan! Not Mexican, but very tasty; we’ve tried it ourselves, in a pinch. You can even use baby corn.

OK, OK, we know that margaritas and tequila shots aren’t foods, they’re drinks, and that thus the title of this piece is a tad off, but come on, Tequila is a classic part of college life and Cinco de Mayo good times alike, and many of us have made bad decisions involving it. But did you know that agave plots must be registered, and that the good stuff retails for somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars?

Traditional huaraches are thick ovals of masa (like stretched-out taco shells) about the size of flip-flops and topped with beans, cheese, your favorite meat, crema, lettuce, and anything else they can hold. The name itself, adorably, means “sandal” in Spanish.