What Chipotle means
Chipotle is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "smoked chile". It is built from chīlli (chile) and pōctli (smoke). It is pronounced chee-POHT-leh, and it is most associated with central Mexico.
Literally smoked chile: a ripe jalapeño dried over smoke. The Spanish spelling swallowed the l of chīl-, which is why the word is so widely mispronounced.
Chipotle is one of the many Mexican food words formed in Nahuatl. Spanish borrowed it, and in several cases English borrowed it again from Spanish. See how Nahuatl builds words and the full list of Mexican food names.
This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: The words that appear inside dish names: the chiles (ancho, guajillo, pasilla, chipotle), the corn words (nixtamal, masa, tortilla, elote), and the tools (comal, molcajete, metate). Learn these and most menu items decode themselves.
