Tex-Mex cooking is so-called because of the Texan variations introduced in the process of popularising Mexican cuisine in the United States. It has become incredibly popular north of the Rio Grande in the last decade or two, with fast food chains and more up-market Tex-Mex restaurants cropping up all over the US, including places far away from Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, which have always had strong ties with their neighbours.

Burritos are the most popular quick lunch far up the Californian coast, nachos are served at every sports bar from Oregon to Vermont, while some fast food chains have managed to make tacos more popular than even the classic American hamburger.

Mexican cuisine purists can sometimes get upset about the confusion that emerges out of this fusion. The global assumption that Tex-Mex is the same as simply ‘Mex’ does the latter a disservice – Mexicans do not all eat the ‘combination plates’ common in American restaurants: massive plates, filled with unidentifiable, often quite bland mounds of food, drenched in melted cheese, sour cream and salsa.

Tex-Mex can be guilty of missing out some of the finer points of the cuisine – an inevitable consequence of its transfer to the mass-produced fast-food market – but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be delicious when done well.

Chilli con carne is one of the most globally famous products of Tex-Mex cooking. The cheap and homely combination of beans, spices, and minced beef has been further popularised in the US by its famous advocates, from celebrities to Presidents, each with their own unique recipe.

This process of individually customising your chilli reaches its natural conclusion in the chilli cook-off, where each chef’s secret ingredient battle to make their pot stand out from the crowd. These special additions to the basic chilli recipe are in many cases downright bizarre: including anything from apple juice, to whipping cream, to mushroom soup, to peanut butter. Still, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!