This will probably offend a few people, but I would describe Mexican empanadas by saying they are like Latin America’s “hot pockets”

Roughly translated, “empanada” essentially means something that is “wrapped in bread.” The beauty of empanadas is that how you make them and what you fill them with are completely up to you! Popular filling options include delicious meats like crab, marlin, and beef, as well as completely different things like tasty fruits, delicious nuts, and more desert-oriented flavors–the options are virtually limitless.

Inside Latin America, empanadas are little pastries and, commonly, meat pies that are filled with beef and vegetables, ham and cheeses, and so forth, that are most commonly cooked in the oven but that are also sometimes fried on the stove. Both baked and fried empanadas are a popular snack in Mexico and pretty much all throughout Latin America.

Of course, you’ll find empanadas recipes in Spain, Portugal, and much of the rest of the world under various names, but I’m going to show you one particular authentic Mexican variation on the empanada recipe, here.

Emapanadas served in Mexico are most commonly either desserts or items on the breakfast menu, and they tend to come with a lot of sweeter fillings like pumpkin (as in this case), yams, sweet potato, cream, as well as a plethora of fruit fillings.

What the empanadas in Mexico are like really depends where you go in the country because each region of Mexico has its own “take” on the Mexico empanada recipe. For example: meats, cheeses, and vegetables are not very popular empanada fillings in some states, but they are very popular and widely eaten in others. In the sate of Chiapas, empanadas are typically filled with chicken or cheese are commonly eaten for breakfast, dinner, or even as little snacks throughout the day. Also depending on the region and on the particular empanada recipe being used is the dough: it can be based on wheat or on corn, and sometimes even on Yuca flour. It just depends on who’s making this tasty treat!

But enough chat; here’s how you make delicious, easy Mexican pumpkin empanadas:

Cook Time: ~1 hour

Ingredients for this easy empanada recipe:

warm water (one cup)
white sugar (1/3 cup)
baking powder (1/4 teaspoon)
all-purpose flour (3 cups)
vegetable shortening (one cup)
salt (1.5 teaspoons)

canned pure pumpkin (4 cups)
white sugar (one cup)
ground cinnamon (1.5 teaspoons)
ground ginger (one teaspoon)
eggs (two)
beaten egg (one)
ground cloves (a half teaspoon)
salt (one teaspoon)

Cooking Directions for Making These Mexican Empanadas:

Start this baked empanada recipe by preheating your oven to 175°C (350F, for you Americanos ). Then line a few baking sheets with some parchment paper.

Whisk your flour in a large bowl, along with the 1/3 cup of sugar, and the 1.5 teaspoons of salt, all together.

Then cut the vegetable shortening into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs.

Then, stir the warm water in, only about two tablespoons at a time, just until you’re able to gather the dough together, and then add the quarter teaspoon of baking powder to dry the dough out a bit.

Knead this dough a few times in your bowl, then scrape it out onto a floured surface.

Cut the dough into quarters, and then cut each quarter into thirds so that you now have 12 equal portions.

Roll each portion into a ball. Cover these dough balls with a cloth, and just let them rest while you make the empanada filling:

Mix together the pumpkin, the two eggs, the one cup of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, your cinnamon, the ginger, and cloves. Keep mixing until the consistency is smooth.

On a floured surface, roll each of your dough balls out into a thin circle that is about 15cm (six inches) in diameter.

Spoon 1/3 cup of your filling into the center of each dough circle, then fold the dough over the filling to make a half-moon shaped pie, and then crimp the edges of the crust together with a fork, leaving the little fork lines in the dough.

Now, gently lay each of the empanadas onto your prepared baking sheets.

Brush the top of each pie with a bit of beaten egg.

Bake the empanadas in your preheated oven until their filling is hot and their crusts are shiny and browned. This should take around 20 minutes.

So there you have it: a simple and easy empanada recipe for baked Mexican empanadas with pumpkin filling. I think you’ll love this tasty authentic Mexican treat, and if you try it out and you do, leave me a comment in the section below and, if I get enough feedback, I might just have to share another of these authentic and easy Mexican recipes for making tasty treats like these. I hope you like these empanadas from Mexico, and I’ll speak to you again soon!

Technorati Tags: baked empanada, easy empanada recipe, empanadas from Mexico, fried empanadas, Mexican empanada, Mexican empanadas, pumpkin empanadas

In Mexico, the carnitas include some or all parts (called “tacos de surtida”) of the pig, including the intestines, ears, nose, testicles, dick, mouth, lungs, uterus, the skin, the ribs, the kitchen sink… I swear to god. The authentic authentic carnitas tacos are definitely not for the squeamish or the unadventurous, if you haven’t tried them before! For this recipe, I’m just going to have you use either the pork butt or shoulder (your choice) to make “tacos de maciza”, which is a way of saying carnitas with just the meat and NOT all other parts. (Maybe I’ll find a way to do that for a future recipe, if there’s enough interest…)

Mexican taco recipes like this do take some time to cook, but if you love your authentic Tacos from south of the border, there’s no substitue for the deliciousness that are tacos de carnitas. So here we go:

Prep + Cook Time: 4 hours

Ingredients (makes 20 tacos de carnitas):

20 corn tortillas
1 kg pork butt or shoulder, cut into small chunks.
2 large, sliced oranges (including the skin)
2 bay leaves
6 cloves of garlic
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbsp ground oregano
1/4 tbsp grounded clove
50g pork lard
1 chopped white onion
1 big bunch of chopped cilantro
10 limes
black pepper to taste
salt to taste

and…
pico de gallo
salsa roja or salsa verde (your choice)

Directions:

Start by cutting the excess fat off the pork meat. Cut the pork pieces into pieces that are a few inches wide. Then place all the meat in a cazo or a big pot.

Add enough water to cover it by about 5 cm, then add the orange, garlic, pepper, cinnamon, bay leaves, the oregano,s alt and the clove.

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and continue cooking for 60 min or until meat is very tender, and be sure to add more water if necessary so the meat stays covered the entire time.

Make your Mexican salsas (listed above in the ingredients) for this dish, while waiting for the pork to cook.

When tender enough, add salt, and keep cooking it for another 10 minutes or until all the water has evaporated.

Drain the meat and place on a separate plate.

Heat the lard in the same pot. When hot, add the meat until it’s fried golden, about 10 to 20 minutes. Mix it often so the meat doesn’t stick and add a little water now and then to keep it from sticking to the pot.

Once it has fried, remove the bay leaves and cinnamon, then drain the meat in paper towels.

Heat up the corn tortillas: 1 min each/side. Place two on each plate and add a portion of the meat in the center of the tortilla and fold in half. Do that with each taco.

Garnish each with cilantro and onion, your salsas, and a wedge of lime, and serve!

Carnitas can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days and then just need to be reheated before assembling the tacos you serve later on. That’s partially why we made so many tacos de carnitas with this recipe: if you’re going to spend four hours cooking something, even the most delicious authentic Mexican taco recipes, you may as well get a big payoff–in this case: a small cache of delicious tacos you’ll be able to eat away at for the next few days. That is, unless you invite all of your Mexican food loving friends over and have a big cena/dinner party, which is an even better idea if you can arrange it!

Carnitas tacos: even president Calderón cannot refuse…

Alright, well I hope you enjoy this authentic Mexican taco recipe, and I’ll be back again soon with another great recipe! -Carlos

P.S. I thought you might like to see this. This is how they cook the pork for these tacos de carnitas in Mexico, in huge quantities in restaurants and for the street markets:

Technorati Tags: carnitas tacos, taco recipe, Taco Recipes, tacos de carnitas, tacos de maciza, tacos de surtida

Back to the carne asada: these tacos are often prepared in the northern Mexico, in states like Sonora, Baja California, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and so on. The northerners love their beef, and all of Mexico makes a staple of the taco, and so it’s only but natural that we have this taco recipe for carne asada tacos, and it’s only but natural that you are here, reading this, wanting to make carne asada tacos yourself at home, because they are freaking delicious! So here we go:

Cook Time: 2 hours

Ingredients (serves 6 taco recipe lovers):

1.5 lbs of boneless beef top sirloin, cut up into little thin bite-size slices for the tacos
12 (6 inch) corn tortillas
1/4 large onion, chopped up
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped up
either radishes or cucumbers, sliced up
1 lime
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
4 tbsp canola oil

plus…
guacamole
salsa Mexicana (AKA “pico de gallo”)
saldsa roja or salsa verde, raw or rosted sauce, however you prefer

Directions for making these carne asada tacos:

Place your sliced meat into a short, shallow bowl, and season it with salt and some black pepper.

Squeeze lime juice all over the meat, and turn the meat over and over again until it’s evenly coated with the juice. Then cover, and refrigerate the meat for 30 minutes.

Heat 1 tbsp of canola oil in a large skillet on high heat. Stir in 1/3 of the beef, and saute it for one minute.

Transfer the meat to a serving dish, then repeat the process with your remaining beef.

Meanwhile, go and heat your tortillas in a comal, or you can grill it like this guy does in the video below at around the 7:30 minute mark:

To serve these ground beef tacos, place two tortillas on top of each other. Add desired amount of meat, spoon over some pico de gallo, guacamole, and whichever other salsa you chose to make (roja or verde). Top each taco with onion and cilantro. Garnish with a wedge of lemon, to later be squeezed over taco before eating, and slices of either radishes or cucumbers.

And enjoy! I think you’ll find this authentic carne asada recipe yields amazing tasting tacos, and that you’ll love them! This is also a relatively easy carne asada recipe, so aside from it taking a while to cook, I think even newbies to cooking Mexican at home should find this taco recipe fairly easy. So try it out, have your good friends and family over to treat them to your carne asada, and provecho!

Technorati Tags: authentic Mexican taco recipe, easy carne asada, ground beef taco recipe

The Mexican molletes are almost always served with sides of Mexican salsa and/or pico de gallo to further enhance the deliciousness! And sometimes, you’ll also see molletes from Mexico topped with chorizo meat, sliced up ham, bacon, and even mushrooms, but the salsas are more common in my experience, as well as that of my Mexican chef friends, here.

The molletes dish is considered one of the more filling but easy-to-prepare Mexican breakfast recipes. It’s common for either the mother or father in a Mexican family to make this dish on Sundays for the whole family; as this is very much considered a family breakfast recipe in central Mexico.

Oddly enough, some of the best molletes I’ve ever tasted were the ones they serve at Sanborns and at VIPS, two Mexican chain restaurants that serve SUPER delicious molletes breakfasts! Anyway, enough chatter. This authentic Mexican recipe for molletes is going to mimmic the delicious ones I’ve found in those Mexican restaurants. Here we go:

Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients (Servings 6):

6 bolillos (a type of savory, crunchy crust Mexican bread that’s soft inside)
1 cup of black or pinto refried beans (the beans need to be on the sweeter side, not bitter or heavy)
1 cup of shredded manchego or mozzarella cheese–I prefer Oaxaca, if you can find it where you live

plus…
salsa Mexicana (pico de gallo)
salsa roja de molcajete

Cooking Directions:

Slice the bolillos in half, lengthwise.

Warm up your beans/cook your beans, and spread a couple tablespoons on the white side of each piece of your bread.

Cover each with shredded chihuahua cheese and be generous in your portions.

Set them up one by one in an oven tray, with the cheese side facing up.

Heat up oven at 250F. Once hot, insert the tray and bake the molletes until cheese has completely melted: should take about 10 to 15 min, but check them because the bread can burn and the cheese can become crispy if you overdo it. Molletes are normally baked until the top layer of cheese has melted and begun to bubble, and the edges of the bread roll have become slightly golden brown in color.

While the molletes are baking, prepare your Mexican salsas to go with it.

When ready, remove the molletes from your oven and serve one bolillo per person and garnish with pico de gallo and a little bit of salsa de molcajete to taste.

And then enjoy! This authentic Mexican molletes recipe makes one of the easiest Mexican breakfast recipes dishes I’ve seen in a while, so it’s simple if you have an oven and a bit of time on your hands, and you’re eager to learn your next delicious authentic Mexican recipe Provecho! -Carlos Lima

Technorati Tags: Authentic Mexican Recipes, Mexican breakfast recipes, molletes, molletes recipe

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients for this Mexican salsa recipe:

5 chiles serranos
5 ripe tomatoes
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon salt

Cooking Directions for molcajete salsa roja:

First off, you can see how this salsa is made by watching this great little video on YouTube. Bonus points if you understand spanish!…

Using a comal or a flat iron pan, grill the chiles and the tomatoes for about 8 minutes or until they are tender. Make sure you flip them around once in a while so they don’t burn. When done, peel the tomatoes removing the black skin

In a molcajete, mash the garlic and chiles. Once those are fully mashed, add the tomatoes and smash them thoroughly, add salt, and stir and mix it all together. Serve it right in the molcajete or in a salsera (a salsa bowl).

This Mexican salsa recipe is super simple to make and salsa roja is served all over the pace in Mexico. Almost every single taco stand you visit will serve some variation of this red salsa!

As for recommendations on other authentic Mexican recipes to pair this Mexican salsa recipe with, salsa roja always goes great with carne asada tacos, tacos de carnitas, fajitas, black beans molletes, and really a pile of other traditional Mexican dishes… seriously, there are too many to list here! But this salsa roja is great with any Mexican quesadilla or any meat taco where you want to add some delicious extra flavor!

One thing to keep in mind: if you can make this salsa and then let it sit for upwards of a day, it’s going to taste better than if you devour it straight after making it. The extra time allows for the ingredients to interact with each other for a while and marinate and really bring out the flavors a lot better, so if you’re going to follow this authentic Mexican salsa roja recipe to the letter, you’ll let the salsa sit for at least a few hours before serving it. So try it out–I think you’ll love it!–and check back here again very soon for the next addition to the authentic Mexican recipes blog! -Carlos

Technorati Tags: authentic mexican salsa recipe, Mexican red salsa, Mexican Salsa Recipe, molcajete salsa roja, salsa roja de molcajete

Cook Time: 1 hour

Pambazos ingredients (serves 6):

6 big bolillos or teleras (any Mexican/Latin food market should have them in the bakery area. If not, you can substitute with some similar dry white bread, but I really recommend you use the real ingredients for this if you can find them.)
250g longaniza
4 big potatoes
2 cups shredded lettuce
salt to taste
vegetable oil
sour cream
crumbed fresh cheese
green salsa (salsa verde)

For the guajillo sauce:

4 chiles guajillos pre-boiled, deveined and deseeded
1 small tomato
1 gralic clove
salt to taste
1 cup of chicken stock

Directions for making pambazos:

1. Make the sauce: add all the sauce ingredients to the blender, blend until they make a paste. Strain the sauce and set in a big bowl where a whole piece of bolillo can fit.

2. For the potatoes, start by frying the longaniza until it’s a little crispy. Then boil the potatoes with the skin until they are fully cooked, and then remove them from the water and dry them up. Then mash them with a fork and mix with the longaniza in the pan and keep cooking them until they are fully integrated and mixed as one.

3. Make the pambazos: One by one, cut the bolillos into two halves, and dip each half in the chili sauce you made.

In the meantime, heat a pan with 1 tbsp of vegetable oil and once hot add one whole bolillo after you’ve dipped it in the sauce (be careful because the oil may jump). Fry each side for about two minutes, then remove and drain excess oil using a paper towel.

Set up the bottom part of the bolillo on a plate and stuff it with the potatoes and longaniza mixture. Garnish with lettuce, sour creme, fresh cheese, and salsa verde, then crown with the top part of the bolillo.

And enjoy your pambazos, another of the easy and delicious authentic Mexican recipes to come from Mexico City!

For the Spanish speakers, this video explains the procedure fairly well. And even if you can’t understand what she’s saying, the visuals will help:

Technorati Tags: authentic Mexican pambazos, Authentic Mexican Recipes, pambazos

For those unacquainted with the soft, supple, round, delicious, FAT curves of the gordita, gorditas are part of what we call antojitos Mexicanos, and they’re a very traditional Mexican appetizer, snack, and entrée. They’re sort of like a taco/sope/burrito, or like “hot pockets”, for the gringos reading this! For the Colombianas and Venezuelans, this goridta recipe will yield something akin to what you know as an “arepa.”

They are served all over Mexico, but they’re extremely popular in Mexico city, where they are nearly as popular as quesadillas! In D.F., you’ll see them served on the street at night, when the ladies set up their tents outside their homes and sell them hot off the comal. When they’re served at lunch time, they’re seen more as a junk food snack instead of a meal.

And for your Spanish lesson of the day, gordita means “little fat one” in Spanish Here we go:

Cook time: 30 minutes + however long it takes you to make your favorite stuffing for these (explained below)

Ingredients (serves 14 gorditas):

For the dough:

2 cups corn flour maseca
1/4 cup white wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1.5 cups warm water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup sour creme
1/4 cup queso fresco (fresh cheese)
1 cup shredded romaine lettuce
salsa verde or salsa roja

For the stuffing that goes inside, you need to pick one of your favorites below and also make it. Obviously I can’t provide the recipe for all of these guisados that you can use to stuff your gorditas with, so do a search in Google, find a good recipe, and use it to make one of these gordita stuffings. Here’s a few examples of what you could make:

• pork stew
• barbacoa sheep stew
• picadillo ground beef dish
• tinga shredded chicken
• mole poblano (chicken with mole, it can be any type of mole: green, red, etc)
• chicharron en salsa verde (a pork rines dish)
• pipian
• rajas con crema y queso Oaxaca
• chorizo con papas
• refired beans and cheese

Directions on how to make gorditas. This will make the dough and tell you how to combine it with the stuffing, but you need to find another recipe for making your stuffing of choice. If possible, make the stuffing/guisado at the same time, so it’s fresh and warm when you stuff it inside the gordita “pockets”:

Start by heating the grill or a comal to medium heat (375°F).

To make the gorditas, thoroughly mix the following together: corn flour, wheat flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add the lard and water to the mix. Mash it until all ingredients form one big ball.

Divide the dough into 14 little balls and cover them with a kitchen cloth to help them stay warm.

Using a dough roller or a metal tortillas press, press each ball between two plastic bags until forming a circle about five inches in diameter and about 1/4 inch thick.

Now cook your Mexican gorditas: lay one gordita on your preheated comal or grill.

Cook each side for about 2 to 3 minutes, or until they are slightly cooked. Then remove.

Heat vegetable oil in a big frying pan (8 to 10 inches in diameter), then fry 2 to 3 gorditas at the time for 1 minute on each side, until the sides are lightly crispy.

Absorb the excess oil off each fried gordita by blotting with paper towels, and keep them warm (sticking them in the oven works well, with a little heat).

Once you’ve finish frying them all, take them one by one and make an incision big enough to stick in a spoon with some stuffing. The picture of the stuffed gordita on the right has a big incision–yours will likely not need to be that big!

Now add two or three tablespoons of your favorite dish (guisado) for the stuffing, that you’ve already made for this purpose. Some suggestions for stuffings are listed above in the ingredients section.

Then serve with lettuce, sour cream, cheese, and your favorite Mexican salsa–but if the stuffing of the gordita already has a sauce/salsa in it, that’s enough already and you don’t need to serve extra.

And enjoy your gorditas! Sink your teeth into the warm stuffed corn cake and enjoy one of Mexico’s favorite lunch time treats and dinner delights! Authentic Mexican recipes like this gorditas recipe isn’t exactly the easiest or the most simple of Mexican cooking recipes, but it sure is delicious and if you have some Mexican friends in your life, this dish is a sure bet for finding your way into their hearts! Provecho, amigo! -Carlos

Technorati Tags: authentic Mexican cooking recipes, Authentic Mexican Recipes, gordita recipe, gorditas recipe, how to make gorditas, Mexican gorditas

Even though is not exactly what you’d typically think of when picturing a mole sauce, it does fulfills the requirements to be classified one: it’s a dry grounded chili recipe that is prepared in the Mexican mole fashion. It originated in San Miguel del Puerto, in the state of Oaxaca, and it is served all throughout central México. This is more like a beef stew with many veggies and the xoconostle fruit, which is kind of like a Mexican prickly pear.

Cook Time: 1.5 hours

Ingredients (serves 6):

1 kg lean beef, cut into small 5 cm chunks
2 young corn cobs
5 zucchinis
½ white onion
3 garlic cloves
250 grams of green beans
2 xoconostles
2 large epazote branches
2 large carrots sliced in 4s
5 chiles pasillas
3 limes
salt to taste
12 corn tortillas

Directions:

Cook the beef cuts in two litres of water, along with half of your 1/2 onion and 2 garlic cloves. Add salt to taste and keep it on low heat. This should take about 15 minutes.

Cut the corn cobs into 4 pieces each. Do the same with the zucchinis and the carrots. Slice each of the green beans in half. Peel the xoconostles and slice them into halves.

Once the meat is cooked, add the corn and green beans to the pot. Five minutes later, add the carrots, the zucchinis, xoconostles, and the epazote branches

In the meantime, submerge the chilies in water and then remove them, then deseed and devein them, and then add them to the blender along with 1/2 cup water, 1/8 of white onion (half of your remaining quarter piece), and the single remaining garlic clove. Blend thoroughly.

Strain and add this sauce to the pot with all the ingredients that are cooking at this point.

Simmer until all veggies are tender, but not too long or else they may get mushy. This should take about another 30 minutes.

Taste it to see if it has enough salt to your liking. Add more if necessary.

And enjoy it! Serve it in big bowls, adding a piece of each ingredient to each bowl, and squeeze half a lime’s juice into each bowl. Serve with hot corn tortillas.

Mole de olla is not Tex-Mex in any way, shape, or form: this is pure Mexican food! So enjoy it, check back here again soon for more super delicious authentic Mexican recipes for cooking traditional food from Mexico, and provecho!

Technorati Tags: Authentic Mexican Recipes, epazote, Mexican mole recipe, mole de olla, xoconostle