All about the ancient tribes
During the time that they were in power, the Aztecs farmed vast tracts of land. Corn, beans, and squash were the three most important foods in their diet. They added chiles and tomatoes to these ingredients. They also gathered a species of crayfish-like critter called an acocil, which is common in Lake Texcoco, as well as a type of algae called spirulina, which they baked into cakes.
The three items that were considered to be staples were maize, beans, and squash, to which nopales and tomatoes were typically added. Both pepper and salt could be found everywhere. The majority of an Aztec person’s diet consisted of fruits and vegetables, but they also occasionally ate honey bees, dogs, turkeys, ducks, and other types of domesticated birds and animals.
Beans and corn were staples in the Aztec diet for the vast majority of the population. They got their protein by eating insects, such as ants and grasshoppers, and on sometimes worms as well. Beans were typically served as a side dish with an Aztec dinner, which consisted of anywhere from two to three tortillas on average.
It is believed that the Aztecs only attempted to domesticate ducks and turkeys as their sole livestock species. There is also evidence that they consumed domesticated canines, but the majority of their other meat was obtained by hunting. This included deer and rabbits, in addition to iguanas, gophers, frogs, tadpoles, and insects.
Commoners in Aztec society were provided with two meals a day.After working for a few hours in the morning, they sat down to their first meal, which was typically a maize porridge flavored with chiles or honey or sometimes tortillas, beans, and sauce.They consumed the meal that was considered to be the most important of the day when the temperature was at its peak, which was in the early afternoon.
Over an open flame was how the Aztecs prepared their meals. When they wanted to boil anything or make a stew, they would suspend cooking pans over the fire in the hearth. Tamales and other foods were also steamed by them.
In the marketplaces of Tenochtitlan, an Aztec who was hungry may select between sellers offering tacos packed with vegetables (beans, squash, tomato, nopal cactus), meat (dog, rabbit, turkey, eggs), or the unusual wealth of the lake itself (water-insects, amphibians, algae).
An assortment of domestic items, including as pottery, bone needles, obsidian blades, musical instruments fashioned from human and canine bones, the bone of a carved deer, and the bones of turkeys and dogs that were used as meals, have been discovered in the region. The Aztecs did, in fact, consume dog meat.
Corn, often known as maize, was the most important staple food for Aztec civilisation. This grain was so essential to their way of life that it even featured prominently in their mythology. It was the food that, similar to wheat in a significant portion of Europe or rice in the majority of East Asia, was required for a meal to be considered complete.
Tomatoes, both red and green, as well as white sweet potatoes, jicama (a kind of turnip), chayote (vegetable pear), nopal cactus, and peanuts were all planted during this time period.However, the tomatoes were considerably smaller than the present varieties.Guavas, papayas, custard apples, mamey, zapotes, and chirimoyas were just few of the various kinds of fruit that the Aztecs were known to cultivate.
An anthropologist from New York has proposed that the Aztecs didn’t just sacrifice humans atop their holy pyramids for religious reasons; rather, they did so because they were forced to consume people in order to achieve the necessary amount of protein in their diet.
In addition to vegetables like beans and squash, corn (sometimes spelled maize) served as the primary staple item in their diet. Potatoes and a very fine grain known as quinoa were two of the most prevalent crops cultivated by the Incas. In addition to a vast range of fruits, the Aztecs and Maya were known to choose avocados and tomatoes as their primary sources of nutrition.
In addition to eating corn directly off the cob, Aztecs made a soup out of the kernels of corn that they named pozole. In order to make what were known as tamales in Aztec culture, the corn meal dough was typically blended with beans and vegetables before being wrapped in corn husks and cooked.
The Aztecs elevated the appreciation of chocolate to a whole new level. They thought that their gods had bestowed cocoa to them as a gift. They utilized cacao beans as payment to buy food and other items much like the Mayans did, but they also liked the caffeine rush of hot or cold, spiced chocolate beverages served in ornate vessels. These beverages may be served either hot or cold.