What Molcajete means
Molcajete is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "sauce bowl". It is built from mōlli (sauce) and caxitl (bowl). It is pronounced mol-kah-HEH-teh, and it is most associated with the whole country.
Literally the mole bowl: a basalt mortar whose rough volcanic pores do the grinding. Its pestle has its own name, the tejolote.
Molcajete 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.
