Finding the Best Tex Mex Cookbook for Your Kitchen

Tex-Mex is not a watered-down version of Mexican food. It is a regional cooking of its own, built by Mexican-American cooks in Texas from Northern Mexican tradition, Texas ranch beef and whatever the local store carried: yellow cheese, chili powder, flour tortillas, cumin. Cheese enchiladas in chili gravy, puffy tacos, chile con queso, fajitas and the combination plate all belong to it. In Houston it is the everyday Mexican food.

Good Tex-Mex cookbooks are rarer than good Mexican ones, and many books labeled “Tex-Mex” are really about something else. This guide picks seven that genuinely belong to the Texas Mexican kitchen, from Robb Walsh’s history of the cuisine to books on queso, chili and barbecue, and one that argues Texas Mexican cooking is older than Tex-Mex itself. For each we set out what the publisher and published reviews say it contains, and who it suits.

Julia’s earns a commission on purchases made through links on this page, at no cost to you. Recommendations are based on what a Mexican kitchen in Texas looks for in a cookbook, publisher information, library catalog records and published reviews, which we cite.

Quick verdict: the best Tex Mex cookbook to buy

The other four cover chili from the Terlingua cook-off, Tex-Mex barbecue from two pitmasters, and Texas Mexican cooking before Tex-Mex.

Five Tex-Mex cookbooks side by side

Five of the seven, one for each kind of cook, with the details each publisher gives. All seven are described in full below.

Cover images from Amazon. Page counts and formats are for the editions linked; other editions differ.

Our picks for the best Tex Mex cookbook, book by book

These seven cover the classic combination-plate repertoire, two of its signature dishes in depth, the meeting of Tex-Mex and Texas barbecue, and the older Texas Mexican home cooking. For each we give what the publisher, library records and published reviews say it covers. We have not cooked our way through these books; where we describe a strength, we say whose view it is.

What makes a cookbook Tex-Mex rather than Mexican

Plenty of cookbooks put “Tex-Mex” on the cover and then teach Oaxacan mole or Yucatecan cochinita pibil. Those are fine dishes, but they come from Mexico’s interior and south, not from Texas. Our guide to Tex-Mex vs Mexican food covers the difference in detail; for a cookbook, a few signs tell you which side of the line it is on.

• The cheese. Tex-Mex uses yellow cheese, often processed, melted into queso and over enchiladas. Interior Mexican cooking uses fresh and aged white cheeses such as queso fresco and cotija.
• Chili gravy and chili powder. The brown, cumin-heavy chili gravy on Texas cheese enchiladas is Tex-Mex. Mexican enchilada sauces are usually built from whole dried chiles; see enchilada sauces explained.
• Beef and flour tortillas. Fajitas, the combination plate, crispy beef tacos and big flour tortillas are Texan. Corn and pork dominate further south.
• The history. A real Tex-Mex book talks about San Antonio chili queens, Rio Grande Valley ranches, and the Texas restaurants that shaped the cuisine.

Pati Jinich’s new Foods of La Frontera and Claudette Zepeda’s Cooking the Borderlands are border cookbooks worth knowing, but both range far beyond Texas, so we left them off this list.

How to choose a Tex-Mex cookbook

1. Classic repertoire or one dish?

Walsh covers the full Tex-Mex menu, and The Big Texas Cookbook the whole state. Queso! and The Terlingua Chili Cookbook go deep on one dish each. Most cooks want a full-menu book first.

2. History or just recipes?

Walsh puts history beside every recipe, and Medrano writes a headnote on each dish’s place in Texas food history. The Texas Monthly editors and Segovia are more about getting dinner on the table.

3. Do you cook outdoors?

Fajitas were born over open fires, and two of these books, ArnieTex and Barbacoa, assume a grill or smoker. Our guide to how to eat fajitas covers the serving side.

4. Color photos or archive photos?

The two barbecue books are photographed in color. Walsh’s uses mostly black-and-white historical images, which tell a story but show less of the finished dish.

5. Restaurant Tex-Mex or Texas Mexican home cooking?

If you want what you order at a Tex-Mex restaurant, start with Walsh. If you want what Mexican-American grandmothers in Texas cooked at home, Medrano gets closer.

How we picked these seven Tex-Mex cookbooks

We started from what a Texas Mexican kitchen recognizes as Tex-Mex: the combination plate, enchiladas in chili gravy, queso, fajitas, chili and the flour-tortilla breakfast, and the history of the Texas cooks who made them. We left out books that use “Tex-Mex” for interior Mexican recipes, and books of general Southwestern cooking. Among the rest we chose for variety: the standard history, an all-Texas book, two single-dish books, two barbecue books and one book on the older Texas Mexican tradition. Every book was in stock on Amazon in the United States when we checked. We took page counts, years, formats and recipe counts from publishers (Penguin Random House and its imprints, HarperCollins, DK, Quarto’s Harvard Common Press, Texas Tech University Press), authors’ sites and articles, library records and booksellers, and descriptions from named sources, including Texas Standard, Edible Rio Grande Valley and Marfa Public Radio, all recorded in our notes. We describe what publishers and reviewers say; we have not cooked every recipe. Several well-loved Texas books were in short supply on Amazon when we checked, so we left them out: Sylvia Casares’s The Enchilada Queen Cookbook from Houston, Diana Barrios Treviño’s Los Barrios Family Cookbook from San Antonio, Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Grill and Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook, Fain’s The Homesick Texan’s Family Table, and Ama: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen; Ford Fry and Jessica Dupuy’s Tex-Mex Cookbook and Walsh’s The Chili Cookbook were back-ordered. We found no in-print cookbooks from Houston’s Ninfa’s or San Antonio’s Mi Tierra.

Tex-Mex cookbook questions, answered

What is the best Tex-Mex cookbook for a beginner?

Walsh’s book covers the everyday Tex-Mex plates and is the better read on where the dishes come from. For the rest of the Texas table, try The Big Texas Cookbook. Lisa Fain’s The Homesick Texan Cookbook is a good choice too, but it was not available new when we rechecked. For Mexican cooking in general, see our guide to the best Mexican cookbooks for beginners.

Is Tex-Mex real Mexican food?

It is real food with Mexican roots, cooked in Texas by Mexican-American families for generations. It is not the same as food from Mexico’s interior, and Adán Medrano argues that Texas Mexican home cooking is older still. Our guide to Mexican food myths untangles the common confusions.

Who is the leading writer on Tex-Mex?

Robb Walsh, whose 2004 Tex-Mex Cookbook is the standard history in recipes. Lisa Fain is the best-known voice on Texas home cooking.

Is there a Houston Tex-Mex cookbook?

Lisa Fain, whose Queso! is on this list, grew up near Houston, and Walsh was a Houston critic and restaurant partner. Sylvia Casares’s Houston-based Enchilada Queen Cookbook was in short supply when we checked. Our guide to Mexican food in Houston covers the city’s food scene.

Do I need special equipment to cook Tex-Mex?

For most recipes, no: a heavy skillet, a comal or griddle for tortillas, and a blender. The barbecue books, ArnieTex and Barbacoa, need a grill or smoker for much of what they teach.

Our choice for a first Tex-Mex shelf

Start with Robb Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Cookbook for the classic dishes and their story, then add The Big Texas Cookbook for the rest of the Texas table, or Lisa Fain’s Queso! for the dip every Tex-Mex table starts with. When you want to go further back, Adán Medrano shows what Texas Mexican cooking was before anyone called it Tex-Mex. For the wider shelf of Mexican cookbooks, see the best Mexican cookbooks.

And when you would rather someone in Houston did the cooking, see the menu or call to order.