Dead Can Eat: The Foods of Dia de los Muertos and Where to Find Them in Dallas

Sugar skulls.

Don’t be alarmed if on Nov. 1 and 2 someone wishes you “Feliz Día de los Muertos,” or Happy Day of the Dead. The Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos is a sacred time celebrated for millennia (In the modern era, the Day of the Dead corresponds with the All Souls Day and All Saints Day). But it’s by no means macabre. Día de los Muertos, with its roots in Aztec tradition, is a joyful time. Beloved ancestors return to the realm of the living to mingle with loved ones—and eat. The journey from the afterlife works up an appetite.

Like any holiday worth its salt, Día de los Muertos is heavy on the feasting. And, like the energy spent during the trek from the hereafter, the ritual preparation of the food associated with the holiday is labor intensive and best undertaken with family.

Tamales, an Aztec staple, are perhaps the most significant of the Día de los Muertos comestibles. Its elements (filling, masa, and cornhusk or banana leaf wrapper) correspond to the innards and skin of the individual and his/her petate, a straw bed-mat. In pre-Hispanic times the petate represented a death shroud. Simply put: Death nourishes. I say, find said nourishment at tamale factories across Dallas-Fort Worth.

The tamale’s piping hot deliciousness is matched by a big pot of mole, the most common of which, at least stateside, is the dark mole poblano, a complex sauce of chilies, nuts, spices and chocolate of legendary origin. It can take up to a day and whatever number of ingredients you care to use to make a mole, and they can be green, red, yellow, black, or any color of the earth to which we will all return.

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