What Chile means
Chile is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "chile pepper". It comes from chīlli (chile pepper). It is pronounced CHEE-leh, and it is most associated with the whole country.
chīlli is attested in the Nahuatl vocabularies of 1555 and 1571, and nearly every Mexican pepper name is built on it. It has nothing to do with the country Chile, whose name comes from the Andes.
Chile 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.
