A Beginners Guide To Mexican Seafood

Seafood is perhaps not the image in your mind when thinking of Mexican food. Saying that though, Mexico does have plenty of famous seafood recipes and fish recipes. The country borders on the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, just like the United States, making fishing an important industry there.

With so many miles of coastline, it is inevitable that the bounty of the ocean would become an important part of Mexican cuisine and there are a great many wonderful Mexican fish and seafood recipes to try. If you have never sampled any of these dishes for yourself, prepare for a very special treat indeed.

Ceviche

One of the many Mexican seafood recipes, which everyone owes it to themselves to try at least once, is ceviche. This is a dish where seafood (usually shrimp, octopus or squid, though mackerel and tuna are also common) is "cooked" by marinating it in limejuice. Limejuice contains acids, which denature the proteins in the seafood or fish, and this gives a very similar effect to cooking with heat. However, it should be noted that if other shellfish are served as part of a ceviche that they are commonly cooked beforehand to ensure safety.

Other than limejuice, Mexican recipes for ceviche often include onion, cilantro, and chili peppers, salt and sometimes avocado. Ceviche is a common dish throughout central and South America, with each country having its own variation on the dish - but a lot of food connoisseurs prefer the Mexican style of ceviche to other countries' takes on this dish. You may see this dish served with crackers, on a tostada or even as the filling for a taco!

A La Veracruzana

The Mexican state of Veracruz has a very long coastline and as you would expect, Veracruz is the birthplace of many Mexican seafood recipes and even a style called "Veracruzana." This entails cooking fish or seafood in a tomato sauce enlivened with olives, capers, and chilies. This tangy, spicy complement is popular with shrimp and red snapper. There are also many other seafood dishes and fish dishes making use of it.

A La Plancha

The "A la Plancha" method is a popular way of cooking fish in Mexico. This is a culinary technique, which originated in Spain and came to the new world with the conquistadors. A metal plate is placed over an open flame and the fish is grilled on this plate, rather than directly over the heat itself. This is a cooking method, which is also often used to grill steak as well as fish. It allows for a more even distribution of heat than cooking fish directly on the grill and prevents the common problem of having the fish stick to the grill.

This information is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fish and seafood in Mexican food recipes. There would not be enough space to list all the kinds of Mexican fish and seafood recipes here because there are so many - which means that there are a nearly limitless number of different dishes to explore, enjoy and of course most excitingly of all, try your hand at cooking in your own kitchen!


Copyright (c) 2009 Christine Szalay Kudra