A FOOD TRADITION
New Mexican cuisine
New Mexican cuisine is a regional Hispano, Indigenous, and Mexican American tradition centered in the upper Rio Grande and broader southwestern interior. Its defining ingredients include locally adapted red and green chiles, corn, beans, squash, blue corn, wheat, and pork. Techniques include nixtamalization, roasting and drying chiles, stone-ground masa preparation, stewing, and oven baking. Representative dishes include enchiladas with red or green chile, carne adovada, and posole. Although it shares history and ingredients with Mexican and Southwestern cuisines, New Mexican cooking has a distinctive chile vocabulary, agricultural history, and repertoire shaped by Pueblo and Hispano communities.
Dishes linked to this cuisine
1–6 of 6
green chile cheeseburger
Explore the dish and its connections.
New Mexican green chile relleno
A flame-roasted New Mexican green chile stuffed with melting cheese, coated in egg batter and fried.
New Mexico biscochitos
Anise-scented, lard-enriched New Mexican shortbread cookies finished with cinnamon sugar.
New Mexico green chile chicken tamales
Steamed corn-husk parcels of masa filled with shredded chicken in roasted New Mexican green chile sauce.
New Mexico green chile stew
A slow-simmered meat and potato stew deeply flavoured with roasted Hatch Valley green chile.
New Mexico red chile posole
A New Mexican stew of lime-treated corn, pork and dried red chile, traditionally served during the holidays.
Catalogue preview Cuisine connections may be unreviewed. Regional comparisons include their food references and do not establish the ingredients of a particular meal.