Tex Mex Salad

Tex Mex salad refers to any salad recipe from the Tex Mex cuisine, a cuisine that blends food products from the US into culinary creations from Mexico. Tex mex salads are most popular in the states along the Mexican border like Texas, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

Tex Mex Salads: Ingredients Used and Preparation Methods

Tex Mex cuisine used a combination of Spanish and Mexican cooking techniques and locally available American foods to create signature dishes. Locally available produce in the form of beef, beans, tortillas, nachos and hot sauce was combined to form many different kinds of dishes. Mexican spices like cumin, coriander, paprika, and parsley are used in the cooking process to create flavored hot or cold salads.  

Serving and Eating Tex Mex Salad

Tex mex salads can be consumed hot or cold. The salads are usually served as a complete meal or as simple accompaniments to meat based dishes.  

Popular Tex Mex Salads  

• Tex mex taco salads are popularly served in the restaurants. Ground beef or turkey is cooked with kidney beans, garlic, onions, tomato, cumin, chili, cilantro, and garlic. Thick meat gravy is prepared and then garnished with cilantro. Usually, lettuce is served with the meat mixture along with an onion, tomato salsa and a sour cream dressing on top of the meat dish. Crushed taco chips are then sprinkled all over the salad just before serving to prevent them from becoming soggy.

• Avocado salad is also a common variety of Tex mex salad. Avocados are mashed with tomatoes, onions, lemon juice, picante sauce, garlic and salsa.

• Salsas are also very common dishes that are served as a form of tex mex salad. Any fresh local ingredients can be used for these recipes but traditionally, green chillies, cilantro leaves, onions, salt, tomatoes, and avocadoes are mixed together to form the salad. Vinegar, salt, onion and sugar may be added to flavor the salad.

• Fajita salads are common. Beef, chicken or turkey fajitas are prepared. These are then grilled on an open flame. Tomatoes, sliced fajitas, beans and cheese are mixed together to form the salad.

• Cornbread salads are not very common but they are prepared in several restaurants that specialize in Tex-Mex cuisine. Corn bread is prepared and cut into cubes. The cubes are then layered with salad greens, pico de gallo, avocado slices, and vinaigrette dressing as a cold or warm salad.

• Ensaldo Con Mangos is a salad that is prepared by mixing cubed mangoes, avocadoes, red onions, queso freso and salad greens. This Tex Mex salad is then dressed with a vinaigrette salad dressing and served cold.