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A flavor both ancient and new front the high deserts of old New Mexico.
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Mesquite-flavored food has become popular throughout the country because of its unique taste. Fish, meats and a wide variety of foods taste better when cooked over mesquite chips.
But home barbecue aficionados are late-comers in realizing the benefits of mesquite. It is truly a miracle of the desert.
Able to send a tap root down 50 meters in search of scarce desert water, mesquite has been a staple food source of Southwestern indigenous communities for centuries. It's beans and pods served as a high protein food that, with the assistance of Native American communities, saved the life of Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and his starving crew.
The beans, sometimes compared to carob, were also used by Native Americans, mixed with water, to make a refreshing, nutritious cold drink. It was also used by early cowboys as a substitute for coffee. The flowers of the mesquite plant produce a superb honey. The root and sap of mesquite have been used as an anesthetic salve, and as glue and hair dye. The leaves have been used as laundry brightener and as a fertilizer.
Many Southwestern ranchers consider the mesquite a daunting enemy to good grazing. But when mesquite is harvested on a sustainable basis it may have a high economic value, (in mesquite is honey, mesquite firewood and mesquite furniture) than does cattle grazing.
The delicate, smoky flavor of mesquite cooking has been a favorite of the indigenous people and Mexican cowboys or Vaqueros of New Mexico for centuries. To add this distinct, ancient flavor to your barbecue:
Soak one or two handfuls of mesquite chips in water for 30 minutes before cooking.
With charcoal, let fire burn to coals, drain chips and add handfuls directly to coals. When chips start to smoke, begin cooking.
With gas and electric grills, place two large handfuls of dry chips on a sheet of heavy duty foil and fold into a flat pouch. make holes in the top of the pouch and place directly on the lava rock or coil before lighting the burner. Begin cooking when chips begin to smoke.
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