The Impact of Southwestern Cuisine on American Cuisine

Southwestern cuisine is the most popular cuisines in many of the states of the United States. It is a popular food that titled the agrestic cooking style of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and some parts of the Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado. All the Southwestern cuisines consist a proper blend of recipes that were taken by mainly cowboys, Mexicans and Native Americans all the way through the post-Columbian period of time. But, despite of all the facts, there was a great variety in the cuisines of the mentioned states of the United States.

To a great extent, all the Southwestern cuisine is influenced by the Mexican cuisine(Dragonwagon, 25-35). The Southwestern cuisine often uses all the larger pieces of meat but brain, tripe and other parts are not considered as the part of Southwestern cuisines in the United States. Some names of the most popular Southwestern cuisines are mentioned here-

Baja Fresh

Colorado burrito

Salsa

Chili

Rattlesnake fillet

Rice and beans

Tacos

Poblano

Burrito

King Ranch Chicken

Chile relleno

Stuffed peppers

Taquitos

Chili con carne

Southwestern cuisine is very famous cuisine that has immense popularity in southwestern part of United States. Just like the Mexican cuisine, the Southwestern cuisine is also famous for its extensive application of spices mainly the chile or Chili pepper. The delicious Southwestern cuisine is cooked with beans and they are prepared in all the different manners.

'Chili' is the main ingredient of the Southwestern cuisine as 'chili' is normally denotes to a concentrated soup that is cooked with beans and meat(Dragonwagon, 25-35). Nowadays, many great dining restaurants feature delicious Southwestern cuisines and they are specializing in Southwestern cuisines as the Southwestern cuisines have gained huge popularity in the entire United States.

"There is no American food. When we begin to list American foods, either we talk about regional things like lobster or shrimp Creole, or we talk about spaghetti and pizza and hot dogs...One could argue it's what makes us great. The fact that we don't have a cuisine is a measure of our democracy and of our ethnic heterogeneity."

—Sidney Mintz, Anthropologist(Hudson, 498-499)

The United States is a land of delicious eating from coast to coast and neighborhood to neighborhood. But its cultural and culinary mix makes it impossible to characterize in a single byte or even a string of them.

The two concepts essential to understanding US food are regionalism and diversity, accent on the latter. After all, Italian food differs from province to province and city to city as well. But key themes run through Italy's food from south to north simply because its people have such strong roots in the Italian soil. Not so with the US. A nation of newcomers, its food reflects its origins.

Regional cuisines emerged as settlers — willing and otherwise — modified their culinary traditions to suit local climates. The simple, sturdy foods of the Northeast reflect more than any other the English origins of the country. But meats and vegetables imported from the homeland merged with local ingredients such as turkey, maple syrup, lobster, clams, cranberries and always corn to ...