What Metate means
Metate is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "grinding stone". It comes from metlatl (grinding stone). It is pronounced meh-TAH-teh, and it is most associated with the whole country.
The sloped stone slab worked with a hand roller called the mano. Despite the look of the word it is unrelated to metl, the maguey.
Metate 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.
