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Southwestern cuisine is food styled after the rustic cooking of the Southwestern United States. It comprises a fusion of recipes by Spanish colonial settlers, cowboys, Indigenous People of the Southwest, and Mexicans. It is similar to Mexican cuisine but often involves larger cuts of meat that are often smoked or braised for hours.

When the Spanish pushed north from Mexico into the area near present-day Santa Fe in the early 1600s, they found that the chile seeds they brought with them flourished in the climate. Over more than a century of isolation, a distinctive cuisine developed that relied on the chile as pretty much the sole source of seasoning. Today, the state of New Mexico and the surrounding Southwest (with the exception of Nevada) use the varietal known as the New Mexican chile almost exclusively — most often in the form of the signature cooked sauces of either chopped, fresh green pods or their dried red cousins. Not everyone realizes that green and red chiles are from the same plant; if not picked while green, they eventually turn red.

Available ingredients
Corn, beans and squash, such as summer and acorn squash, were the only crops grown by Native Americans in the Southwest. Game -- rabbits, antelope, wild turkey, quail, deer and desert rodents -- was plentiful and used in many native recipes. Along the streams, fishing provided another source of quality protein.

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