Tex-Mex grew out of the kitchens of South Texas, northern Mexico and the Southwest, and its dishes now show up on menus in every state. Some began as street food, some as marketing ideas and some as happy accidents in a busy restaurant. Here are ten favorites, from sizzling fajitas to the hard-shell taco, with a short note on where each one came from.
1. Fajita: Ranch hands’ skirt steak turned sizzling platter
Fajitas started as ranch food in South and West Texas, where vaqueros, the Mexican cowboys, received skirt steak as part of their pay, according to the Austin Chronicle. It was a cheap cut at the time, and the dish stayed regional for years.
The first commercial fajita taco stand opened in 1969 at a celebration in Kyle, Texas, and Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo sold them in Houston in 1973 as tacos al carbon. By the 1980s, sizzling platters of grilled meat, onions and peppers had spread through Mexican restaurants across Texas and then the rest of the country.
2. Chimichanga: A deep-fried burrito with a disputed birth
The chimichanga is a deep-fried burrito tied to Tucson, Arizona, where El Charro Café, open since 1922, credits Monica Flin as the inventor of the dish. The restaurant gives no date for the invention.
Another account comes from Phoenix, where Macayo’s founder Woody Johnson said he developed it in 1946, and no official record settles the dispute. The usual version is a flour tortilla stuffed with rice, cheese, beans and meat, folded into a rectangle, fried, and served with salsa, guacamole or sour cream.
3. Guacamole: An Aztec avocado sauce on every chip basket
Guacamole began in Mexico, and its name comes from Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and means roughly avocado sauce. The dish crossed the border long ago and is now a standard part of Tex-Mex menus.
The basic mix is ripe avocados, salt, lime juice, onions and jalapeños, and many cooks add cilantro. Restaurants serve it with chips, on nachos and beside fajitas. Guacamole has also boosted American avocado sales, especially around the Super Bowl and Cinco de Mayo, and National Guacamole Day falls on September 16.
4. Frito pie: Chili, cheese and corn chips in one bag
Frito pie traces back to Fritos, which Charles Doolin of San Antonio created in 1932, and the first version of the pie was reportedly served in 1949 at the Dallas Dietetic Association conference, according to Texas Standard.
The original recipe layered corn chips in a casserole dish, covered them with chili, and added cheese and onions before baking. Later versions pour chili straight into a split bag of Fritos, often with jalapeños on top. Teresa Hernandez sold the bagged pie at a Woolworth’s counter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1960s, and Texas football games helped make it a fundraising staple.
5. Nachos: A border-town snack made for military wives
Nachos date to 1943, when Ignacio Nacho Anaya reportedly created Nacho’s Especial for military wives in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, according to History.com.
Anaya’s original used fried tortilla triangles, shredded cheese and sliced pickled jalapeños. Accounts differ on the name of the restaurant where it happened, but the dish is credited to the border town. Later versions with melted cheese sauce, meat and sour cream turned nachos into a nationwide stadium and movie-theater snack.
6. Chili con carne: The dish the San Antonio chili queens sold
Chili con carne was the main dish of the San Antonio chili queens, women who served it at plaza stands from the 1860s until the late 1930s, according to the University of the Incarnate Word.
Vendors worked from dusk to dawn, cooking over mesquite fires and lighting tables with oil lanterns at Alamo Plaza, Market Square and later Haymarket Plaza and Milam Park. City health officials closed the stands for good in the early 1940s, citing unsanitary dishwashing, but the dish stayed on Texas menus and became a signature of the state.
7. Chile con queso: A warm cheese dip with Chihuahua roots
Chile con queso is a warm, smooth dip of melted cheese and chili peppers that is probably a derivative of queso flameado from Chihuahua, Mexico, according to Wikipedia.
It became part of 20th-century Tex-Mex cooking and appears most often on menus in the southwestern and western United States. Many versions use Velveeta, American cheese or Monterey Jack with cream, onion and paprika, and cooks may stir in black beans, pico de gallo or ground beef. It is served with tortilla chips and sometimes spooned over tacos and fajitas.
8. Enchilada: A tortilla seasoned with chili
The enchilada comes from Mexico, where its name derives from the verb enchilar, meaning to add chili pepper to, so the word roughly means seasoned with chili.
Early enchiladas were plain corn tortillas dipped in chili sauce, and the dish appears in the 1831 cookbook El cocinero mexicano. Sauces today range from chili-based and mole to tomato-based and cheese-based. Fillings include meat, cheese, beans and potatoes, and Tex-Mex plates commonly roll the tortillas around cheese, beef or chicken with rice and beans on the side.
9. Sopaipilla: Puffed pastry served with honey
A sopaipilla is a fried pastry made from leavened wheat dough that puffs when deep-fried and leaves a hollow pocket inside.
In New Mexico the pillow-shaped pastry is served as bread for mopping up sauces and is often eaten with honey. In Texas it is always dessert, dusted with cinnamon sugar and served with honey, and many restaurants in Texas and Oklahoma bring it at the end of the meal. The name comes from Spanish, and the pastry is eaten across Latin America too.
10. Hard-shell taco: The crisp U-shaped taco that Taco Bell spread
The hard-shell taco is a Mexican American dish that developed in the United States as a U-shaped, crisp-fried corn tortilla filled with seasoned ground beef, cheese and lettuce.
The earliest references to the crisp taco date to the early 1890s. Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert published the first recorded recipe in 1949, and Juvencio Maldonado received a patent in 1950 for a taco-making machine. Glen Bell opened the first Taco Bell in 1962, and its restaurants did much to popularize the shell in the 1960s.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
