What's the Difference Between Tex-Mex and Authentic Mexican Food? (2024)

FAQs

What's the Difference Between Tex-Mex and Authentic Mexican Food? ›

Tex-Mex dishes often feature ingredients like black beans and corn, adding depth to their creations. In contrast, Mexican cuisine showcases a rich and varied flavor spectrum with diverse salsas that include fresh tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and an array of chili peppers.

Tex-Mex entrees typically come with black beans while Mexican dishes are served with pinto beans — and soupy ones at that. Then there's yellow cheese versus white cheese, fried corn tortillas versus soft ones and chili powder versus chile peppers.

Here are a few key signature aspects of traditional Mexican cuisine to help you distinguish authentic Mexican from Tex-Mex dishes: fresh and healthy ingredients such as tomatoes, chiles, not jars of store-bought salsa for example. traditional spices (such as coriander and epazote) instead of cumin or dry oregano.

Examples of Tex-Mex food include fajitas, nachos, and any dish that uses beef, black beans, canned vegetables, wheat flour, or yellow cheese.

You can look for traditional Mexican dishes on the menu. Examples of authentic Mexican dishes include tacos, enchiladas, chili con carne, and tamales. If the menu features Americanized versions of these dishes instead of the traditional recipes, the restaurant is likely, not authentic.

Another staple of New Mexican cooking is using vegetables more often than in traditional Mexican food. Also, whole corn kernels, ground meat, lots of yellow cheese, and black beans. And while these are used in standard Mexican kitchens as well, New Mexican cooks use them a lot more.

Fajitas are a quintessential Tex-Mex dish known for their sizzling presentation, bold flavors, and fresh ingredients. They have become a staple in many Tex-Mex restaurants, but their history and origin go way back.

What you may not realize is that cheese is not always included in Mexican dishes. Americanized versions of Mexican foods often do have some form of cheese or another, but authentic cuisine omits cheese a good portion of the time. Street tacos, for example, are not served with cheese in Mexico.

Are nachos really a Mexican food? ›

The common dish known today as nachos originated in Northern Mexico. Nachos are actually a relatively recent dish. So recent in fact that that researchers believe they have traced the original creator in the small Mexican city of Piedras Negras.

Tex-Mex cuisine leans on yellow cheese, beef, canned tomatoes, and flour tortillas, creating a hearty and flavorful combination. In contrast, authentic Mexican cuisine emphasizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients such as corn, diverse chilies, and indigenous vegetables, capturing the essence of regional flavors.

If you plan to kick your meal up a notch with authentic Mexican flavor, you should not miss adding chili powder. As one of the common Mexican spices, child powder is a combination of chili peppers and other seasonings such as garlic powder, oregano, and other traditional Mexican spices.

In Mexico, different regions serve rice in different ways. If you order rice in northern Mexico, you most likely will get the rice cooked with chicken broth and tomato flavors—traditional Mexican (or Spanish) rice. However, in southern Mexico, ​plain white rice is more common.

Fajitas, chili, nachos—these are all cornerstones of Tex-Mex cuisine. To be fair, for years people living in Texas did refer to these as Mexican food, and it's only been in the past 40 years or so that the term Tex-Mex started to be widely adopted.

Taco Bell is one of the most well-known Tex-Mex franchises in the world. In 1962, their first location opened in Downey, California. In the United States, Taco Bell and their franchisees operate over 7,200 restaurants that serve more than 40 million customers each week.

The three things that really “put the Tex in Tex-Mex,” according to Pat, were yellow American cheese (again, think Velveeta), chili con carne, and the corn tortilla, particularly the deep-fried corn tortilla that allows for the existence of both the crispy taco and the nacho.