A Taste of the Southwest: A Collection of Recipes

Maybe you envision a fat burrito smothered in red or green chile sauce. Maybe it’s a plate of tacos, or beans, or sopapillas, or a frosty margarita in a cactus-stemmed glass. 

The cultural and culinary traditions of the American Southwest—which we define as including Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Oklahoma—go back thousands of years. 

Here, with these recipes and essays, we celebrate some of the ingredients, methods, and flavors of the cuisines in this corner of our country.

Tacos Apson in Tucson, Arizona, is known for its tacos rasurados. Cook’s Country Editorial Director Bryan Roof went on the road to sample these hefty, beefy tacos and returned to the test kitchen to develop his own recipe. To make them, racks of beef ribs are grilled, salted, separated into individual ribs, and grilled again, and then the meat is shaved off the bones and piled in tortillas. 

Store-bought tortillas work for their convenience, but there’s nothing like a homemade tortilla. And surprisingly, it’s not hard to make your own at home. We visited with Santa Fe, New Mexico–based cookbook author and food historian Melissa Guerra to learn the tricks of the trade and then developed our own recipe in the test kitchen. We found that it just takes a little practice to get them right.

Celebrate the tomatillo (no, it’s not just a tiny tomato) in this recipe where it does double-duty. First, it’s sliced thin, macerated, and tossed with Bibb lettuce to make a delightfully tangy salad, and then it is blended with mayo, jalapeño, granulated garlic, and herbs to make a ranch-like dressing inspired by the one at Cafe Rio.

You might know hominy from posole, but it’s more versatile than that. The slightly chewy field-corn kernels also work nicely in a simply prepared skillet side dish. Enhancing canned hominy with smoky bacon is the key.

Chicken-fried chicken is likely derived from chicken-fried steak, which has deep roots in Texas and Oklahoma but an unclear provenance. We set out to learn what it takes to make a good version. Thinly pounded chicken breasts, a crunchy coating that adheres to the chicken, and a creamy milk gravy are the keys.

James Beard Award–winning author Lois Ellen Frank knows the importance of green chiles in Southwestern cuisine. To showcase them, she developed a Potato and Green Chile Casserole modeled after New Mexico’s stacked enchiladas.

Horchata is having its moment, but it’s really nothing new. This creamy rice-based drink has a long history. We did a little digging into the different styles of horchatas, reviewed recipes from some experts, and created our own version.

The prickly pear cactus is the official plant of Texas. At first glance, it might not look like something that would make a great jelly, but the plant has vibrant, juicy fruits that do just that. They just need to be prepped, cooked down, and mashed and then combined with a little pectin to transform into a jewel-toned spread.