The Mexican Pantry 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Cooking Authentic Mexican

Canada is obsessed with Mexican food. Tour any downtown core in the country, and you'll find a spate of taco restaurants, burrito joints, cantinas and more. But what if you wanted to bring those authentic Mexican flavours to your kitchen? How do you start?

You begin by stocking the pantry and refrigerator. In this article, we consulted several sources to provide a beginner's guide to the Mexican kitchen. Pulling insights from Canadian food delivery service Skip The Dishes' food wiki, where you can explore hundreds of dishes from diverse cuisines, this article aims to equip the average home cook with all the basics for an authentic Mexican meal plan.

Starches: Maize, Beans and Rice

In the trifecta of starches used commonly in Mexican cuisine, maize (or corn) is far and away the most revered. Ancient Aztec civilizations worshipped a maize god - one of their most important deities - and the staple grain has enjoyed a principal position in Mexican culture since.

Most often, you'll find corn and maize manipulated in the "nixtamalization" process, where slaked lime breaks down the grains into a grindable, nutritionally dense and aromatic base for several dishes. Home cooks will most likely encounter nixtamalized maize in the form of premade tortillas or masa harina, a corn flour used in everything from homemade tortillas to tamales and tlayudas(Mexican pizza!).

The next most important starch is beans, which appear in astounding variety in an authentic Mexican pantry. Here in Canada, it's hard to find the exact bean varietals you encounter at a Mexico City market, but common grocery store beans like pinto and black beans are more than sufficient.

Finally, there's rice - a colonial introduction from the Spanish. Rice is essential in Northern Mexican and "Tex Mex" cuisines of the Southern US, where it's often cooked with tomatoes, garlic and onions.

Seasonings: Chillies, Spices and Herbs

Here in Canada, we tend to think of dried chilli as the red powder that comes stuffed in little packages at the grocery store. It's not like that in Mexico, where dried chillies are less a product than a diverse class of products. In a typical Mexican pantry, you might find smoky dried chipotle peppers, fiery chillies de arbol, fruity guajillos, bitter ancho chillies and about a hundred other peppers! In various combinations, they weave their way into mole stews, long braises, salsas, hot sauces and more.

Other common spices and herbs that feature prominently in Mexican cuisine are:

• Cilantro - the love-it-or-hate-it herb is ubiquitous in fresh salsas and garnishes

• Cumin -the pungent spice is popular in meat and bean dishes

• Mexican oregano - actually more closely related to marjoram, the minty dried herb lends a fresh, cool note to several dishes.

Provided that you stock your pantry with various chillies and these basic spices, you can create a Mexican dish out of just about any meat or vegetable. Oh, and don't forget the limes!

Vegetables: Squash, Tomatoes, Avocado and More

Vegetables comprise an enormous portion of the typical Mexican diet - a far cry from the meat-and-cheese-heavy dishes of Americanized Mexican cuisine. Important "New World" vegetables include squash, tomatoes, avocado, zucchini, onions, fresh peppers, tomatillos, nopal cactus and chayote.

Depending on where you live, you might have trouble finding some of these items (nopal, for instance). But that's okay. Authentic Mexican cookery is more about using what's fresh and available than any specific, hard-to-find ingredient.

Condiments: Hot Sauce and Premade Cooking Sauces

To round out your Mexican pantry and fridge, consider the wide world of hot sauces and premade cooking sauces. In an average Mexican grocery store, you'll find a wide variety of hot sauces, many of which are available here in Canada (Valentina's and Cholula are the most widespread).

You'll also find short-cut sauces for mole, chilli verde, enchiladas, etc. A well-stocked Canadian supermarket or Latin American market should have each of these items. And don't worry about using these premade alternatives in a pinch - most Mexican households do!