Southwestern Grilling

With the growth on giant restaurant chains something that passes for Southwestern Cooking (sometimes called Santa Fe Cooking) is being pushed out across the world. This typically means Nachos and Fajitas are on the menu. Authentic Southwestern Food however isn't as much a specific set of dishes as it is a way of preparing food and the ingredients that are used. Southwestern Food is a mixture of traditional American cooking with Native American ingredients and a lot of Spanish and Mexican influences. Chief among these ingredients are chili peppers, whether hot of mild, fresh, frozen or ground into a fine powder.

There are a lot of different kinds of chilies out there and they have a wide range of heat. Now believe it of not, there is a scale for testing the heat of a chili. It's called the Scoville Unit and it uses high pressure liquid chromatography to measure the heat that a chili has. Okay, you don't need to know the science behind it but the scale works like this. At the bottom is the bell pepper the weights in at the bottom of the range with a score of zero. The hottest pepper tested is the Red Savina Habenero which measures 577,000 Scoville Units. So you have an idea of how hot this is the Jalapeno comes in at about 5,000. While many don't consider a Jalapeno to be all that hot, imagine a pepper 100 times hotter. Now that's a hot pepper.

When you first start looking into the world of chili peppers it is easy to be intimidated. There are a lot of different kinds out there. Your best bet is to start out sticking to recipes, paying special not to the flavor and heat of the chilies you use. From here you can start to learn what you like and what works best. Generally it is best to use fresh chilies because they have the best flavor. You can fire roast peppers to add extra flavor to them. This is a great trick to spice up any dish. Also remember that the seeds and interior membranes of a pepper have more heat. If you want to keep the heat down, remove all this and wash out the chilies.

Of course Southwestern Cooking has a lot more to it than just chilies. Cilantro (leafy Coriander), Pinon Nuts, Pistachios, Tomatillos, Jicama and Limes are all important ingredients. These add the flavors other than heat to many dishes. But the most important flavor is that of the fire. Smoke is very important in Southwestern Cooking, hence the importance of the grill. When it comes to Southwestern Food most people think of Mesquite. Mesquite is a bitter wood and if you are doing anything other than grilling over a hot fire I suggest you use it in moderation. Other woods that are in high supply in the Southwest are pecan, apple and apricot. These are sweeter woods that impart a milder flavor so they are great for adding a little smoke to your grill and to anything you might want to smoke.

But grill isn't just important for the flavor. This is the traditional method for cooking many Southwestern dishes. Everything from Fajitas to seafood are prepared over a fire. The intense heat and smoke make this style of cooking fun and flavorful. So get some fresh chilies, a couple of good recipes and get grilling.