110 Fun Facts About Mexican Food

In which year did UNESCO inscribe traditional Mexican cuisine on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list?

UNESCO inscribed traditional Mexican cuisine in 2010, at the same session that listed the French gastronomic meal and the Mediterranean diet, making it one of the first national cuisines honoured.

Roughly how many ingredients does an average mole poblano contain?

Mole poblano typically calls for around 20 ingredients, among them several dried chiles, chocolate, nuts, seeds, bread and spices; some Oaxacan moles run to 30 or more.

Pozole is a hearty Mexican soup built around which key ingredient?

Hominy, maize kernels nixtamalized until they swell and split, is the base of pozole; the name comes from Nahuatl pozolli, and the soup is a New Year's Eve fixture in Mexico and New Mexico.

Menudo, the red-chile soup eaten as a weekend hangover cure, is built around which cut?

Tripe, the lining of the cow's stomach, is simmered for hours in a red chile broth to make menudo, a weekend staple and famous hangover remedy across northern Mexico.

In tropical parts of Mexico such as Oaxaca, tamales are commonly wrapped in what instead of corn husks?

Banana leaves replace corn husks across Oaxaca and Mexico's tropical south, wrapping the large, flat tamales oaxaqueños and lending the dough a moist texture and a faint grassy flavour.

The green chile, white sauce and red pomegranate of chiles en nogada are meant to represent what?

The colours echo the Mexican flag: green poblano chile, white nogada sauce and red pomegranate seeds, which is why the dish is a fixture of September's Independence Day season.

The creamy nogada sauce on chiles en nogada is made from which nut?

Walnuts give nogada its name, from nogal, the Spanish for walnut tree; the fresh late-summer crop is peeled and blended with milk or cream into the pale sauce.

Legend says chiles en nogada were first prepared in 1821 to entertain which future emperor of Mexico?

Agustín de Iturbide, crowned emperor the following year, was fêted in Puebla after signing the Treaty of Córdoba; tradition credits the nuns of the Santa Mónica convent with the dish.

The word guacamole comes from Classical Nahuatl and literally translates to what?

Guacamole is Nahuatl āhuacamōlli, literally 'avocado sauce': āhuacatl (avocado) plus mōlli (sauce), the same mōlli behind the word mole.

Guacamole is traditionally mashed with salt in which stone tool?

The molcajete is a volcanic-rock mortar; the pestle that goes with it is the tejolote.

In the early 1900s, avocados in the United States often went by what name?

Alligator pear was the common US name, after the fruit's rough green skin; California growers pushed the name 'avocado', from Nahuatl āhuacatl, from the 1910s onward.

In nixtamalization, corn is soaked and cooked in what kind of solution before grinding?

Limewater, a solution of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), provides the alkaline bath that loosens the hulls, improves the flavour and makes the grain's nutrients far more available.

Nixtamalizing corn makes tryptophan available and helps prevent which deficiency disease?

Pellagra, the niacin-deficiency disease, struck populations that adopted maize without the process, from southern Europe to the US South, where it persisted into the 20th century; the alkaline bath frees the grain's bound niacin.

What is the name of the dough formed from nixtamalized cornmeal that becomes tortillas and tamales?

The word nixtamalization itself is Nahuatl: nextli (ash) plus tamalli (cooked corn dough).

The Aztecs and other Nahuatl speakers called tortillas by what name?

Tlaxcalli was the Nahuatl name for the flatbread, and the state of Tlaxcala shares the root; the Spanish later applied their own word tortilla to it.

The Spanish word tortilla, from torta plus a diminutive ending, literally means what?

Little cake is the literal sense: Spanish torta (cake) plus the diminutive ending -illa. Spaniards applied the word to the corn flatbread they met in Mexico in the 16th century.

Elote, Mexican street corn on the cob, is classically dusted with which crumbly grated cheese?

Cotija, a salty, crumbly aged cows' milk cheese named after the town of Cotija, is grated over the mayonnaise-slathered cob with chile powder and a squeeze of lime.

Chilaquiles, fried tortilla pieces simmered in salsa, are usually eaten at which meal?

Breakfast is the hour for chilaquiles: the dish is a classic way to use up the previous day's tortillas and salsa, typically topped with onion, crumbled cheese and a fried egg.

Which seed gives the Mexican pork dish cochinita pibil its burnt-orange colour?

Annatto, the seed of the achiote tree, is ground into a paste with bitter orange juice for the marinade; the pork is then roasted in a píib, a pit oven dug into the ground.

The word barbacoa, the root of the English word barbecue, comes from which language?

Taíno, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean, gave Spanish barbacoa, a framework of sticks for cooking over fire; in Mexico the word came to mean meat slow-cooked in a pit lined with maguey leaves.

What does the word carnitas literally mean?

Little meats is the literal sense of carnitas, carne plus a diminutive ending; the pork is braised in lard over low heat until tender inside and crisp at the edges.

Carnitas are most closely associated with which Mexican state?

Michoacán is carnitas country: the town of Quiroga bills itself as the carnitas capital, and the marbled shoulder cuts are simmered in lard in a wide copper pot called a cazo.

A churrera pipes churro dough into hot oil through a nozzle of what shape?

Star nozzles give churros their ridges, which help the dough cook through and crisp evenly; in Mexico churros are often filled with cajeta or chocolate.

Cajeta, the caramel famously made in Celaya, is a dulce de leche made from which animal's milk?

Goat's milk sets cajeta apart from cow's-milk dulce de leche; Celaya, in Guanajuato, has made it since colonial times and traditionally packed it in small wooden boxes, the cajetes that gave it its name.

Flan napolitano, made in parts of Mexico, adds which ingredient to caramel custard for a denser texture?

Cream cheese, beaten into the egg, condensed-milk and evaporated-milk base, gives flan napolitano its dense, cheesecake-like texture; the base dish is what the French call crème caramel.

Mexican horchata is typically made from which grain?

Rice, soaked, ground and strained with cinnamon and sugar, makes Mexican horchata; the Spanish original, Valencia's horchata de chufa, is made from tiger nuts instead.

Agua de jamaica, one of the most common aguas frescas, is brewed from which flower?

Hibiscus calyces, the dried flor de jamaica, are steeped to give the deep-red, tart infusion; the same drink is known as sorrel in the Caribbean and bissap in West Africa.

Tequila must be distilled from which specific plant?

Blue agave (Agave tequilana Weber var. azul) is the only plant permitted; jimadores strip its leaves with a coa to reach the piña, the core that is cooked and crushed for its juice.

In which year was the Agave Landscape around the town of Tequila declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

The Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Facilities of Tequila joined the World Heritage List in 2006; the site covers the agave fields, historic distilleries and the towns of Tequila, El Arenal and Amatitán.

The gusano sometimes added to bottles of mezcal is actually the larva of what?

The practice only began in the 1940s or 1950s, and about 90 percent of Mexican mezcal comes from Oaxaca.

Unlike tequila, mezcal may be made from how many species and varieties of agave?

The piñas are cooked for about three days in earthen pit ovens, which is where the smoky flavour comes from.

In Mexican slang, as in the name michelada, what is a chela?

A cold beer: chela is Mexican slang for beer and helada means ice-cold, so 'mi chela helada' is one story behind michelada; the drink adds lime juice, chile sauces and spices.

Which flavouring traditionally perfumes the enriched dough of pan de muerto?

Orange blossom water, together with orange zest, perfumes the buttery dough of pan de muerto; the loaf is finished with a sugar crust and bone-shaped strips across the top.

Rosca de reyes, the ring cake with a hidden Child Jesus figurine, is eaten around which date?

January 6, Epiphany or Día de Reyes, is rosca day: the ring cake recalls the Magi's visit, and whoever finds the hidden figurine owes the others tamales at a later feast.

In Mexico, whoever finds the figurine in the rosca must host a party or take it to church on which feast day?

Candlemas, Día de la Candelaria on 2 February, is when the finder of the figurine must provide tamales and atole for the others, an echo of pre-Christian maize offerings.

Which milky, viscous drink of fermented agave sap was considered sacred in pre-Columbian Mexico?

Pulque, fermented from maguey sap (aguamiel), was the sacred drink of the goddess Mayahuel in Aztec ritual, its use limited to priests, elders and nobles; today it is poured in pulquerías with a sour, yeasty tang.

A chipotle is the smoke-dried, ripened form of which chile?

Jalapeño chiles, left on the plant until deep red and then smoke-dried, become chipotles; the name is Nahuatl chīlpoctli, 'smoked chile'.

By the 2020s, which region of Mexico was the world's largest producer of habanero peppers?

The Yucatán Peninsula grows most of the world's habaneros and holds a protected designation of origin for them; the pepper itself originated in the Amazon basin and spread north to Mexico.

The habanero pepper is named after which city?

Havana, Cuba gave the habanero its name, Spanish for 'from Havana', because the pepper passed through the city's trade; the variety is now grown mainly in Mexico.

In which year did pharmacist Wilbur Scoville devise the test that gave the Scoville heat scale its name?

Wilbur Scoville published his organoleptic test in 1912 while working for the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company; bell peppers score zero, while a habanero can reach 350,000 units.

The original Scoville organoleptic test measured a chile's heat using what?

A panel of human tasters, five of them, sampled a chile extract at increasing dilutions until at least three could no longer feel any burn; that dilution factor became the Scoville rating.

When a poblano chile is dried, what is it called?

Ancho, Spanish for 'wide', is the dried poblano, flat and heart-shaped with a raisin-like sweetness; the fresh poblano is the chile stuffed for chiles rellenos.

Mexican salsa verde gets its colour and tang from which cooked ingredient?

Tomatillos, husked green fruits related to the tomato, are boiled or roasted and blended with chile, onion and cilantro to make salsa verde, the classic sauce for chilaquiles and enchiladas.

In 1992, US dollar sales of salsa overtook those of which condiment for the first time?

Ketchup was dethroned: annual US salsa sales passed ketchup in dollar terms in the early 1990s, a milestone widely reported in 1992 on the back of the Tex-Mex boom.

Oaxaca cheese, the stringy melting cheese rolled up like a ball of yarn, is also known by what name?

Quesillo is what Oaxacans call it: a pasta filata cheese stretched into ribbons like mozzarella and wound into a ball, and the go-to filling for quesadillas.

Huitlacoche, a Mexican delicacy stuffed into quesadillas, is what exactly?

A corn fungus, Ustilago maydis, swells the kernels into grey-black galls; US farmers call it corn smut and destroy it, while Mexican cooks prize its earthy, mushroom-like flavour.

To coax Americans into eating huitlacoche, promoters rebranded it under what name?

Mexican truffle was the marketing name, chosen to borrow the fungus's earthy cachet; it still turns up in food writing, but the ingredient has struggled to break into US and European diets.

Chapulines, toasted on a comal with garlic, lime and salt, are what kind of creature?

Grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium are the chapulines, harvested in the rainy season and sold by the scoop at Oaxaca's markets and at baseball games.

Restaurateur Caesar Cardini created the Caesar salad in 1924 in which Mexican city?

Tijuana, where Cardini ran a restaurant for Americans escaping Prohibition, is the birthplace: on 4 July 1924 a short-stocked kitchen produced the salad, which has no link to Julius Caesar.

Nachos take their name from 'Nacho', a common Spanish nickname for which first name?

Ignacio Anaya, known as Nacho, was maître d' at the Victory Club when he improvised the dish in 1943 for a party of US army wives; 21 October is now the International Day of the Nacho.

In which Mexican border town were the first nachos improvised in 1943?

Piedras Negras, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas, is where maître d' Anaya fried tortilla triangles, topped them with melted cheese and pickled chiles for a party of US officers' wives, and called them Nacho's especiales.

Tacos al pastor adapt a shawarma technique brought to Mexico by immigrants from which country?

Lebanon sent waves of immigrants to Mexico in the early 20th century; their lamb shawarma became Puebla's tacos árabes and then, with pork marinated in chiles and pineapple, tacos al pastor.

The 'drowned' torta ahogada, soaked in chile de árbol sauce, is which city's signature dish?

Guadalajara's signature sandwich: a crusty birote roll stuffed with fried pork and refried beans, then drowned in a tomato sauce spiked with chile de árbol.

The concha, Mexico's most famous pan dulce, is named for its resemblance to what?

A seashell is the model: the scored sugar-paste topping mimics the ridges of a shell; the pan dulce tradition was shaped by French and Spanish bakers in 19th-century Mexico.

A molinillo, used to froth champurrado and Mexican hot chocolate, is what kind of tool?

A wooden whisk, carved from one piece with loose rings near the head, the molinillo is rolled between the palms until the chocolate is frothy; it is a staple at Las Posadas alongside tamales.

The burrito is said to have been created in which Mexican border city?

Ciudad Juárez is the usual claimant: legend has street vendor Juan Méndez wrapping his food in flour tortillas and carrying it on a donkey (burro) during the Revolution, hence 'little donkey'.

Oaxaca is famed as the land of how many moles?

Seven is the traditional count: negro, rojo, coloradito, amarillo, verde, chichilo and manchamanteles; the black mole gets its colour from charred chiles and extra chocolate.

Escamoles, another prized Mexican delicacy, are what?

Ant larvae and pupae of the Liometopum ant, dug from nests among agave roots, are the escamoles; they sit alongside chapulines and maguey worms in Mexico's long tradition of eating insects.

Per the earliest documented evidence, nobles from which people brought chocolate to the Spanish court in 1544?

Qʼeqchiʼ Maya nobles from Guatemala, escorted by Dominican friars, presented Prince Philip with jars of beaten chocolate in 1544; the Mokaya of coastal Chiapas had been drinking it since around 1900 BC.

What is a tlayuda, the Oaxacan street-food staple?

A large crisp tortilla topped with beans and cheese describes the tlayuda: a thin tortilla the size of a plate, spread with asiento (pork lard), refried beans and cheese, and often topped with tasajo or chorizo.

The name refried beans mistranslates the Spanish refritos, which really describes beans cooked how?

Well fried, or intensely fried, is how chef Rick Bayless glosses refritos: the beans are boiled, mashed and reheated in the pan, never fried a second time.

Doritos were first made in the early 1960s at a Frito-Lay restaurant inside which theme park?

Disneyland's Casa de Fritos cut surplus tortillas into pieces, crisped and seasoned them, and by 1966 Doritos were the first tortilla chip sold across the United States.

In Mexico, the sweet fruit of the prickly pear cactus is sold under which name?

Tuna is the Spanish name for the prickly pear's fruit, which must be peeled carefully to get rid of its tiny spines and is often blended into aguas frescas.

Pico de gallo, the chopped fresh salsa of tomato, onion and chile, has a name meaning what?

Rooster's beak is the literal meaning, and one explanation heard in Sonora is that the serrano chile chopped into it is shaped like one.

Before the Spanish conquest, which crop's seeds served as money across Mesoamerica for small purchases?

Cacao beans were the small change of Mesoamerica, with a handful buying a tamale or a rabbit dinner long before Europeans had tasted chocolate.

Fajita, a Tex-Mex word meaning little strip or belt, originally referred to which cut of beef?

Skirt steak was one of the scrap cuts handed to vaqueros when cattle were slaughtered on Texas roundups, and they grilled it straight over the campfire.

The Sonoran hot dog, born in the Mexican city of Hermosillo, is wrapped in what before grilling?

Bacon is wound around the sausage, which is then tucked into a soft bolillo-style bun and buried under pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, mayonnaise and mustard.

Which bird, domesticated in ancient Mexico and often served under mole, did the Spanish take to Europe?

Turkey raised in central Mexico was shipped to Europe by the Spanish in the 1500s, and the main domestic varieties on farms worldwide descend from those birds.

Which compound, concentrated in a chile's white pith rather than its seeds, makes salsa burn?

Capsaicin is made in the pale tissue that holds the seeds, not in the seeds themselves, which only seem fiery because they sit right against it.

Chicharrón, eaten across Mexico in tacos and gorditas with green salsa, is made by deep-frying what?

Pork skin, seasoned and deep-fried until it puffs and crackles, is the classic chicharrón, although the same word also covers fried pork belly.

The huarache, an oblong base of fried corn dough, is named after which item of clothing?

A sandal is what the long oval resembled, so customers at the Mexico City stall where Carmen Gómez Medina first made it in the 1930s borrowed the footwear's name.

Which spicy stew was named the official state dish of Texas by its legislature?

Chili con carne took the title in 1977, and Texan purists are strict about it: the main cook-off society bars beans from every competition pot.

Legend says nuns invented Mexico's most famous mole for a visiting archbishop at a convent in which city?

Puebla gave mole poblano its name, and in the tale the panicked nuns ground together chiles, spices, nuts, day-old bread and a little chocolate.

The strips of dough laid across a loaf of pan de muerto for the Day of the Dead represent what?

Bones are what the strips depict, standing for the dead being honoured, and they are often arranged in a circle to suggest the cycle of life.

Tacos al pastor, carved from a spinning vertical spit, have a Spanish name meaning in the style of whom?

The shepherd, or herdsman, is the literal meaning: asado al pastor was an old Mexican name for meat skewered on a stake and roasted over an open fire.

Pepitas, toasted as a snack and ground into Mexican sauces such as pipián, are the seeds of which plant?

Pumpkin seeds take the name pepita from the Mexican Spanish pepita de calabaza, little seed of squash, and some varieties are bred to grow them without a hull.

The oversized, foil-wrapped Mission burrito takes its name from a district of which American city?

San Francisco's Mission District made the style popular in the 1960s: a large flour tortilla folded around a whole meal of fillings and handed over in aluminium foil.

The chimichanga, a deep-fried burrito, is thought to have been created by accident in which US state?

Arizona restaurants dispute the honour, the best-known tale being that Monica Flin of Tucson's El Charro Café dropped a burrito into the fryer in the early 1950s.

Which orchid-pod flavouring was first cultivated by the Totonac people of Mexico's Gulf coast?

Vanilla was a Totonac crop in what is now Veracruz, used as a temple fragrance and worn in good-luck amulets, until the conquering Aztecs developed a taste for it too.

Which religious community of northern Mexico first produced the cheese known elsewhere as queso Chihuahua?

Mennonites made it first, which is why people in Chihuahua and the neighbouring states call it queso menonita rather than by the state's name.

In the slow-roasted pork dish cochinita pibil, the word pib refers to which piece of cooking equipment?

An earth oven, a pit with a fire at the bottom, is where the marinated pork is buried to roast slowly, and a single one can feed up to forty people.

Which stone slab, worked with a hand stone called a mano, has ground maize in Mexico since before 3000 BC?

Metate grinding is a back-and-forth horizontal motion, unlike the up-and-down pounding of a mortar and pestle, and the work traditionally fell to women.

Which pungent Mexican herb is traditionally simmered with black beans to curb their gassy effect?

Epazote earns its place as much for an antiflatulent reputation as for its sharp taste, though its concentrated essential oil is toxic enough to have killed people.

Birria, the slow-cooked chile-red stew served with dipping tacos, comes from which Mexican state?

Jalisco used birria as its own regional word for pit-roasted meat, the cooking style that other parts of Mexico know as barbacoa.

Tacos de canasta, often sold from bicycles on Mexico City streets, are named after being kept warm in what?

A basket lined with paper, foil and plastic and covered with cloth keeps the tacos warm and humid, hence their other name, tacos sudados, or sweaty tacos.

Before it described a style of cooking, the word Tex-Mex was first used in the 1870s as shorthand for what?

A railway, the Texas Mexican Railway chartered in 1875, was the original TexMex, and the name is not known to have been applied to food in print until the 1960s.

Capirotada, a Mexican bread pudding soaked in syrup, is traditionally eaten in which religious season?

Lent is its season, above all Good Friday, and the dish carries symbols of the Passion: the bread for Christ's body, the cloves for the nails, the cinnamon sticks for the cross.

Alegría, a Mexican sweet whose name means joy, binds honey or sugar with the seeds of which ancient crop?

Amaranth was so bound up with Aztec ritual, pressed with honey into figures offered to the gods, that its cultivation was outlawed after the Spanish conquest.

Huachinango a la veracruzana, a classic dish of Mexico's Gulf coast, features which whole fish?

Red snapper is baked whole in a sauce of tomato, onions, garlic and olives, a Mediterranean accent that shows the Spanish hand in the cooking of Veracruz.

Manchamanteles, a Mexican stew of meat, chiles and fruit, has a name meaning what?

Tablecloth stainer is fair warning: the deep red, chile-based sauce is notorious for marking any linen it lands on.

Maize was domesticated in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from which wild grass?

Teosinte looks little like its descendant: its kernels drop off the plant on their own, while those of domesticated maize stay fixed to the cob.

Mexico's mazapán, sold as the candy De la Rosa, swaps the almonds of European marzipan for what?

Peanuts are ground into the paste, and this version is the most common marzipan in Mexico, while other Latin American countries turn to a range of different nuts.

The pastes of Mexico's Hidalgo state descend from pasties brought by 1820s miners from which English county?

Cornwall sent miners and builders to the mining towns of Real del Monte and Pachuca from 1824, and their pasties are filled with potato and beef or with mole and tinga.

Which British writer changed how Americans saw Mexican cooking with her book The Cuisines of Mexico?

Diana Kennedy wrote nine books on the subject, and the Mexican government honoured her with the Order of the Aztec Eagle.

Cilantro, scattered over Mexican tacos and salsas, is the fresh leaf of the plant that yields which spice?

Coriander is the very same plant: cilantro is simply the Spanish word for it, which American English borrowed for the fresh herb alone.

Ahuautle, a delicacy of the Aztec lakes nicknamed Mexican caviar, consists of the eggs of which creatures?

Water bugs lay the eggs on rushes that gatherers set out along the lakeshore, and the harvest is dried, roasted and often fried in egg-battered patties.

Chicle, the natural chewing-gum latex known to the Aztecs, is tapped from which tropical tree?

Sapodilla trunks are slashed with zig-zag gashes so the latex drips into small bags, much as rubber is tapped, and the Nahuatl root of the word chicle can be translated as sticky stuff.

Which Mexico City restaurant of chef Enrique Olvera is famed for a mole sauce aged for thousands of days?

Pujol serves its mole madre, a black mole reheated thousands of times and regularly fed with fresh sauce, with a layer of newly made mole poured over the aged one.

The margarita, thought to be a tequila remake of a brandy cocktail, takes the Spanish name of which flower?

Daisy was already the name of a family of cocktails built from a spirit, a liqueur and citrus, and a Tequila Daisy was being written up in American newspapers by 1936.

The Paloma, a tequila cocktail whose name is the Spanish word for dove, uses a soda of which fruit?

Grapefruit soda such as Squirt or Jarritos is the classic mixer, and one theory even traces the drink's name to pomelo, a Spanish word for the fruit, rather than to the bird.

Tepache, a fermented Mexican drink sweetened with piloncillo, is brewed from the rind of which fruit?

Pineapple rinds carry the wild yeast and bacteria that ferment tepache in a day or two, though its Nahuatl root named a drink made from raw maize.

Kahlúa, a rum-based liqueur made in the Mexican state of Veracruz since 1936, is flavoured with what?

Coffee, specifically arabica, is blended with rum and sugar, and the name Kahlúa means House of the Acolhua people in the Nahuatl of Veracruz.

Rompope, a liqueur said to have been first made in Mexican convents, resembles which festive drink?

Eggnog is its nearest relative: rompope blends eggs, milk and rum, and its name derives from rompon, the Spanish version of the drink that crossed to Mexico.

Café de olla, Mexico's traditional brew with cinnamon, owes its name and flavour to being made in what?

A clay pot is considered essential, because the earthenware lends the drink a special flavour that a metal pan cannot give.

Which class of tequila spends at least two months in oak but less than a year?

Reposado, meaning rested, sits between blanco and añejo, which must stay in the barrel for a year or more, and it may rest in casks as large as 20,000 litres.

The Mexican lager Dos Equis was first named to mark the arrival of what?

The twentieth century was on its way when German brewer Wilhelm Hasse launched his lager as Siglo XX, and the Roman numeral for 20 on the bottle became Dos Equis, two Xs.

Which Mexican lager, brewed by Grupo Modelo, is often served with a citrus wedge in the bottle neck?

Corona's wedge of lime or lemon is said to add tartness and flavour to a lager whose mash includes corn as well as the usual barley malt and hops.

Sangrita, the chaser customarily sipped beside a shot of tequila, has a name meaning little what?

Blood is the image because of the chaser's bright red colour, which traditionally came from fine chile powder, spices and pomegranate.

The bolillo roll, brought to Mexico City by Emperor Maximilian's cooks, is a shorter version of which loaf?

Baguette is the model, which is why the very same roll goes by pan francés, French bread, in Central America.

Aguachile, raw seafood steeped in lime juice and chiles, originated on the coast of which Mexican state?

Sinaloa's first versions were nothing more than boiled water and chiltepín, the small round chile of the region, which is how the dish got a name meaning chile water.