bisteces a la mexicana is literally what a Mexican woman makes from scratch every night—it’s that simple. She may spend hours rolling corn tortillas, or making homemade tortillas, but the end result is the same—a delicious corn tortilla with a melt-in-your-mouth, buttery, slightly spicy, and crunchy side.
The word bisteces comes from the bistecs, Spanish for “little bags,” which many believe describe the corn tortillas that are made from the corn of Mexico. The word actually comes from a Latin word, the latin word bistec, which means “little bag.
bisteces is a great way to make a quick dinner. It’s also great to make a meal that you can keep in the fridge for a week or two. You can use it for breakfast or snack, but it’s also delicious on its own. You just have to know how to make it.
You can make bisteces with eggs, corn, or vegetables. It all depends on how you go about it. You can also use the flour that you buy in the bulk bins at your local grocery store, or you can make your own by baking tortillas. In our video, we have some tips and tricks to help you to make it the best that you can.
This video is part of our series “10 Ways to Make Your Bisteces Awesome”.
The whole idea is to use bisteces as a “chili”: It is a condiment that is great on its own or as a dipping sauce. And it can be made from many things, from ingredients you can buy from the bulk bins at your grocery store to ingredients that you can make yourself.
We put the bisteces into a big bowl and start with a very small amount of chili. For the very first batch, we used a cheap and simple ingredient that you can easily find at your grocery store, which is a packet of chili powder. We mixed the chili powder with water and then added just a pinch of salt. The result is a nice rich but not too intense flavor, so it’s not too strong that it will overpower any other foods you might add.
For the second batch, we added some chilies and a bit more salt to the chili powder (1/2 teaspoon added). For the third batch, we added a good grating of chili cheese and a bit more chili powder. This time we used a packet of chili powder, but we mixed it with a bit of chopped onion. The result was a good-enough-to-eat milder chili, but not too spicy to overpower anything else you might mix it with.
bisteces are a Mexican classic and have probably been around as long as chili. They’ve been called “stewed” or “cooked” chili or “cooked chili” and we liked that idea, so we tried the chili with chopped onions. Adding a bit of chopped onion to the chili powder really gives it a bit more depth, but not too much.
