Rick Martínez’s Mexican Kitchen Essentials Americans Are Overlooking
Rick Martínez, the author of the Salsa Daddy cookbook, shares his kitchen shortcuts and favorite tools that help bring the flavors of Mazatlán, Mexico, into home cooking. After a 20,000-mile road trip across Mexico, Martínez settled in Mazatlán, a coastal city known for fresh seafood and vibrant mercados. His journey inspired his James Beard award-winning cookbook, Mi Cocina, and a second cookbook, Salsa Daddy. He also recently launched Rick’s Cooking School, offering virtual classes from his kitchen.
Essential Cookware and Ingredients
One of Martínez’s key kitchen tools is the Mexican carbon steel comal. Unlike regular griddles or cast-iron pans, comals are thinner and lighter, heating up and cooling down quickly. This makes them ideal for cooking tortillas, toasting dried chilies, and charring vegetables like tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, and garlic for salsa. Martínez uses a 13.5-inch diameter comal that fits seven corn tortillas or four large flour tortillas at once.
For making tortillas, Martínez prefers Masienda’s yellow, red, and blue corn masa harinas. These masa flours capture the flavor of heirloom Mexican corn varieties, which Martínez finds superior to many others he has tried across the country.
Another traditional tool Martínez values is the molcajete, a volcanic rock mortar and pestle. He believes guacamole tastes better when mashed and mixed in a molcajete, and he owns several, including one passed down from his grandfather.
Flavor Boosters and Pantry Staples
Martínez highlights several ingredients that enhance Mexican cooking:
- Canned chipotle adobo sauce: Described as “liquid gold,” it adds a smoky, long-simmered flavor to dishes quickly.
- Pickled jalapeños and their brine: The brine brightens soups, stews, and salad dressings, while the jalapeños add a spicy kick to dishes like fish tacos and potato salad.
- Dried chiles: Guajillo, ancho, pasilla, cascabel, and morita are staples in Martínez’s pantry, with morita being a favorite. For heat, he recommends chile de árbol, guajillo, and ancho.
- Sea salt from Colima: This Pacific coast salt is prized for its quality.
- Piloncillo: A regional sugar with flavors of coffee, chocolate, butterscotch, and caramel. Martínez uses it as a substitute for brown sugar in baking. It is also known as jaggery and can be grated easily.
- Fresh manteca (lard): Martínez uses fresh lard from a local market in Mazatlán. It has a nutty, caramelized pork flavor and is his preferred cooking fat. He notes that good-quality lard is hard to find in the US but can be sourced from Mexican or Latin butchers and grocery stores.
Favorite Kitchen Tools and Aesthetic Choices
Martínez also shared his favorite kitchen tools that combine performance with personal style:
- Vitamix blender: Purchased while writing Mi Cocina, this blender handles chiles, nuts, seeds, spices, and nut butters with ease. Martínez has used it extensively for moles and stews.
- John Boos walnut cutting board: Martínez appreciates the dark wood’s calming quality and the board’s durability and size, which supports efficient workflow in the kitchen.
- Miyabi 9-inch knife: This knife is well balanced, reducing wrist fatigue during extended use. The blade length offers versatility for slicing large and small ingredients.
- Food waste recycler: Martínez uses a Vitamix recycler to turn food scraps into mulch for his plants, finding it faster and cleaner than traditional composting.
For serving and cooking spoons, Martínez prefers blue peltre enamelware, a traditional Mexican enamelware known for its glossy blue or turquoise color. He also replaces plastic plant saucers with peltre ones for aesthetic appeal.
Martínez collects handmade ceramics from across Mexico, using regional pottery to serve dishes authentically. For his second cookbook, he sought out contemporary ceramicists like the brand Hacha.
Personal Touches and Style
Beyond cooking, Martínez enjoys colorful oilcloths for their bright, fun appearance, which he uses in photoshoots and as tablecloths. He also owns a heavy, water-resistant oilcloth raincoat found at a flea market in Mexico City, which he wears in colder, rainy climates like New York.
On a personal note, Martínez wears gel CND nail polish in neon colors, often choosing bright orange or glittery shades. He visits a neighbor who does nails, adding a touch of vibrant style to his everyday life.
