Su Casa Grande

Great Ingredients for Great Food

Pico de gallo is an authentic Mexican salsa made with onions, tomatoes and jalapenos. It's also referred to as "salsa fresca." Other ingredients, such as lemon or lime juice, can also be added. This salsa is commonly included in tacos and fajitas.

Salsa roja (red sauce) is made with cooked tomatoes, onion, garlic, chili peppers and fresh cilantro. It's commonly used as a condiment in both Mexican and Southwestern cuisine.

Salsa verde (green sauce or tomatillo sauce) is made with tomatillos, onion, garlic, chili peppers and cilantro. Use it to accompany just about any Mexican dish for extra flavor, including tacos, quesadillas, fajitas, burritos and enchiladas.

Mango salsa packs a sweet and spicy punch. This salsa is made of mango, red bell pepper, onion, chili pepper and cilantro. Use mango salsa as a garnish on grilled chicken or fish, or even on nachos.

Chipotle salsa combines spicy and smoky, thanks to ingredients such as chipotle chilis, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro and spices. Pair chipotle salsa with carnitas or nachos for an extra kick!

Hot sauce, or salsa picante, can be added to just about any Mexican dish to rev up your taste buds. Hot sauce typically refers to any spicy sauce made from chili peppers and other ingredients. Mexican hot sauce focuses more on flavor than intense heat.

Mole is a Mexican sauce with an unlikely ingredient list, including chili peppers and spices, garlic, onion, unsweetened chocolate and almonds. Somehow this funky list combines to create a savory, intoxicating sauce that can be served over meats, veggies, tamales or enchiladas. Versions of mole differ from various regions of Mexico.

Enchilada sauce is a Mexican chili pepper sauce used to spice up an enchilada. This sauce typically includes ingredients such as chili powder, garlic, onion, tomato sauce and other seasonings.

Guacamole is an avocado-based dip that also includes tomato, onion, garlic and lime juice. This dip is traditionally made by using a pestle and mortar. Besides accompanying chips, guacamole can also be added to your favorite Mexican dish for additional flavor.

Americans Love Mexican Food

There are more Mexican restaurants than Italian bistros, Chinese kitchens, chicken rotisseries, or seafood shacks in the US. No less than 38,000 Mexican restaurants are dispersed all across the American landscape (as of 2011).

Mexican restaurants have become popular across the US and it's not always related to the presence or absence of a significant Mexican community. While less than two percent of the North Dakota population is any kind of Hispanic, a full seven percent of North Dakota restaurants greet guests with sombreros and maracas.

The states with the highest percentage of Mexican restaurants include Texas, New Mexico, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma, while New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maine, and Vermont are among those with the lowest percentage.

It may be a surprise that UNESCO added Mexican cuisine to their lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Perhaps even more unexpected is that the USA has added “Mexican” to its own list of “What can we eat tonight?”

Commonly Used Mexican Spices

One of the things that Mexican food is well-known for is its flavors. When you sit down to have an authentic Mexican meal, you should be fully prepared for it to be filled with flavor! What many often don’t realize is that not all these seasonings correlate to spice in the heat sense. In fact, authentic Mexican food is rarely spicy, only flavorful. So what exactly are the Mexican spices most commonly used in Mexican cooking?

We have listed the most used Mexican spices. Some of these Mexican spices may surprise you.

Garlic: One of the most common Mexican spices. Commonly used in salsa and taco seasoning, often used in conjunction with onion powder.

Oregano: Another commonly used Mexican spice. There are many different variations of oregano, Mexican oregano and Mediterranean oregano to name two. Adding oregano to your Mexican dishes will create a fresh, earthy taste.

Cumin: Discovered somewhere in the Mediterranean, but a huge part of Mexican dishes. It has a bitter, somewhat toasted taste that can’t be replaced by many other spices; this makes cumin a quintessential Mexican spice. Cumin is found in taco seasonings.

Chile Powder: A combination of the previously listed spices and chiles. Chile powder mainly consists of oregano and cumin with chiles and is often used to season meats and vegetables. There are many different varieties of chile powder, including ancho and chipotle, which each have their own unique recipe.

The Margarita

One of Mexico's most beloved exports is the margarita. In its classic form, tequila, lime juice and Cointreau or Triple Sec, is served in a glass with a salted rim. A perfect combination of sweet, salty, sour and bitter.

As with most popular things, more than one person has claimed to have invented the margarita. One of the most prevalent stories is that Carlos "Danny" Herrera developed the drink at his Tijuana-area restaurant, Rancho La Gloria, around 1938. As the legend goes, Herrera dreamed up the cocktail for one of his customers, an aspiring actress named Marjorie King who was allergic to all hard alcohol other than tequila. To make the liquor more palatable, he combined the elements of a traditional tequila shot, a lick of salt and a wedge of lime, and turned them into a refreshing drink.

Another top contender for the title of Margarita inventor is Margarita Sames, a wealthy Dallas socialite who claimed she whipped up the drink for friends at her Acapulco vacation home in 1948. Among her well-connected guests was Tommy Hilton, who eventually added the drink to the bar menu at his hotel chain.

According to The Complete Book of Spirits by Anthony Dias Blue, though, the first importer of Jose Cuervo in the United States advertised with the tagline, "Margarita: it's more than a girl's name," in 1945, three years before Sames claimed to have invented the drink.

In contrast to the fuzzy genesis of the cocktail, the origin of a machine that helped simplify the making of one of its many forms is well documented. In 2005, Smithsonian's National Museum of American History acquired the world's first frozen margarita machine, invented in 1971 by Dallas restaurateur Mariano Martinez.

Cocktail fads may come and go, but the margarita's popularity has remained steady since its invention, whenever and wherever that was.

Come enjoy a margarita with us as Su Casa Grande!

Su Casa Grande

Great Ingredients for Great Food

Americans Love Mexican Food

Commonly Used Mexican Spices

The Margarita

Tortilla Soup

American Favorites

Happy Hour at Su Casa Grande