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Mexican food recipes are extremely varied. The nation has rich food history, every settler or intruder made his contribution to the Mexican cuisine. Aztecs and Mayans introduced beans, tomatoes, corn, and chile peppers into mexican menu, Spanish conquerors brought wheat, herbs and spices.

Corn is now a cornerstone of  the Mexican cuisine. It is used almost in every dish, including desserts, soups and even drinks. Mexicans have special ways of treating corn, depending on the recipe and meal. Treated corn is essential in enchiladas, tortillas, tamales, tacos and sopapillas (click to see mexican food cooking tips). Along with corn, rice is also a very important grain in mexican food. Mexicans use red rice (boiled with tomatoes) for paella and achiote, green rice (with chiles and parsley) for arroz con pollo and sweet rice (with sugar and cinnamon) for a popular drink horchata.

And of course, one cannot imagine Mexican cuisine without spicy sauces, the chief ingredients of which are chile peppers. There are more than 60 kinds of chile peppers that are actively used in Mexican food recipes starting from mild Anaheims ending with burning hot habaneros.

A comestible very peculiar to Mexican cuisine is avocado. It is used mashed (in guacamole), sliced (in soups) and its leaves flavor sauces and stews.

Two more products frequently appearing in Mexican food recipes are beans and tomatoes. Tomatoes are essential in many stews, salsas and rice dishes both fresh and cooked. Beans may be served separately, fried or simmered in water.

In the Mexican food recipes of sweets and desserts vanilla and chocolate take an important place, although they can also be added to sauces. Both products are genuinely Mexican in origin. Vanilla with best flavor is made from the bean of the edible orchid, first discovered in Mexico. As for chocolate, many centuries ago Mexicans used cocoa beans to make a foamy drink, which was not originally sweet, but bitter.

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Popular Mexican food is quite unlike the traditional Mexican cuisine and can be a far cry from tasty and brightly decorated authentic Mexican food. What is meant now under the word-combination "popular Mexican food" is Tex-Mex and food served in numerous Mexican style restaurants and fast-foods.

The dish that is believed to be Mexican and is very popular is taco. Many people expect it to be a hard, big U-shaped thing staffed with beef, lettuce, sour-cream and yellow cheese, because this is exactly the way tacos are served in any European and American Mexican food restaurant. But not a single Mexican will recognize a taco in it, because Mexican tacos are at least five times smaller, made of soft corn-baked tortillas filled with some pork, seafood or chicken. And of course there are a lot of very peculiar kinds of tacos in a genuinely Mexican menu: tacos made of cheeks, eyes and udders (carnitas) or with pure pork loin (macisa). But Tex-Mex or popular Mexican food is ignorant of such brave peculiarities.

Tortilla is sometimes mistaken for an omelet, as it is in Spanish cuisine, but actually tortilla is flattened Mexican bread, made of corn (approximately size of a CD) and it is used for tacos and some other dishes. Quesadilla is a pretty substantial dish. It is a rolled tortilla stuffed with cheese and meat and fried hard. Longaniza de Valladolid belongs to popular Mexican food too. It is a sausage, smoked and formed into skinny and short portions.

And of course it would not be an article about the Mexican food without mentioning the condiments. Chiles, salsas and herbs are capable to make even the plainest dish delicious. And in fact no dish in Mexican menu is eaten without a condiment: it can be a drop of lime or some extra salsa or a dash of chiles. That is why on the table of a good Mexican restaurant you will always find several little bowls with coriander, lime juice, salsa mexicana, spring onions, salsa ingles and of course guacamole.    

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These Mexican food cooking tips will help you to deal with Mexican food and recipes more easily. Any person that does not know Spanish faces the problem that he or she does not understand a thing in all those recipes with their salsas, tacos, enchiladas, tortillas, tamales, quesadillas and sopapillas, letting alone the names of Mexican herbs, spices and chiles (total number of chile pepper species used in Mexican cuisine is about 140). These Mexican food cooking tips will give you brief definitions to at least the most frequently used terms of the Mexican menu.

So naturally Mexican food cooking tips should start with tortillaswhich are Mexican thin, corn bread, used both like a bread and like a base for other dishes, tacos for example. Tacos can be of two types: soft and fried. For this dish tortillas are folded and stuffed with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, salsa and either pork, beef, fish or chicken. Quesadillas differ from tacos in size (they are considerably bigger) and unlike in tacos all the ingredients stuffed into tortilla or masa (corn dough) are fresh, not cooked. Qeusadillas are cooked afterwards. Enchiladas are similar to tacos too, but tortillas for them are fried in oil, then stuffed with any filling and then rolled, heated, smothered with sauce and topped with cheese. Sopapillas are quick bread fried to the puff and crisp state. Tamales are made with masa dough topped with vegetables, meat, spices, wrapped into a banana leaf or a corn husk and warmed up. Mole sauce is a very complex sauce, made with chiles, nuts, fruits, vegetables, chocolate and seasonings. It is served on holidays with beef and chicken. 

And the last but not the least point in our Mexican food cooking tips is salsas (sauces) which are a key moment in any Mexican dish. Salsas can be made from either raw or cooked vegetables and fruits with the addition of chiles. As for chiles,its just impossible to know them all. Just for general knowledge, it is worth remembering that the hottest chile is called habanero and the mildest one anaheim.