34 Party Foods To Make For A Dia De Los Muertos Celebration
Celebrate and honor your the loved ones you've lost with these festive ideas.
The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a traditional celebration of loved ones who have passed away that takes place on November 1st and 2nd of each year. Families will create altars (or ofrendas) to the dead to encourage them to visit, adorning them with offerings and mementos such as flowers, photos, candles, and skull-shaped candies and sweets. Rather than a time of mourning, Dia de los Muertos is a party, the idea being that for a few days you can once again enjoy a meal and celebrate with those who have passed on. We’ve gathered up our 34 favorite (Mexican-inspired) party foods to get you started, but feel free to make whatever your dearly departed loved ones liked best.
Looking for something to get your party started? You can’t go wrong with classic guacamole or queso fundido. For mains, we’re thinking of things that are easy to serve to a crowd (you’re sharing with your family and the dead, after all), like our pozole, our salsa verde enchiladas, or our chiles rellenos. If your family is a little smaller, try our Mexican tostadas, our arepas, or our bean & cheese taquitos—because you assemble them individually, you can make as many (or as few) as you like. Next up, desserts, which some might say are the most important part of the celebration. We’ve included traditional pan de muerto, churros, tres leches cake, and flan, as well as some not-so-traditional spins, like our churro cookies, our sopapilla cheesecake bars, and our Day of the Dead cookies. Make a batch of any of these and the smell alone will be sure to bring your ancestors back from the beyond.
And don’t forget the drinks! This is the time to break out the good stuff, so we’ve included our Cadillac margarita and mezcal margaritas for those who are drinking, and our Mexican hot chocolate and horchata for anyone who isn’t. Check out the rest of our Mexican drinks for more ideas too.
As always, we hope these recipes will help broaden your perspective, and inspire you to try something new. We think the best part about appreciating a culture you’re not a part of is the opportunity to try something new while also having the flexibility to (respectfully!) not be perfect about it.
Mezcal Margarita
With an earthy, slightly smoky flavor, mezcal brings a uniquely savory quality to the typically tequila-based margarita. To spice things up, we add a colorful salt rim spiked with grapefruit zest and red pepper flakes. Tweak the mixture to your preference with different citrus (orange would also be delicious!) or other spices.
Get the Mezcal Margarita recipe.
Day Of The Dead Cookies
These colorfully decorated sugar cookies reminiscent of traditional sugar skulls are almost too pretty to eat. Use your favorite colors and decorate each skull to your own desire—these are like snowflakes, with each face different from the next.
Get the Day Of The Dead Cookies recipe.
Roasted Kabocha Squash
We took inspiration from calabaza de tacha for this roasted squash, adding caramelized umami-sweet flavor through a maple-soy brown butter. Feel free to use pumpkin or butternut here, but we love it with savory and nutty kabocha if you can find it!
Get the Roasted Kabocha Squash recipe.
Pan de Muerto
Pillowy-soft and fragrant with anise and orange flower water, this Mexican sweet bread is eaten during the weeks around Dia de Los Muertos. This recipe yields 1 very large loaf, but you can also divide the loaf in half to make 2 smaller loaves, which will bake in around 35 minutes.
Get the Pan de Muerto recipe.
Best-Ever Pozole
Don't let the time commitment on this fantastically flavorful pozole recipe scare you. It's as easy as bringing water to a boil and letting it simmer away while you multitask on other things going on in your life. The longer you let the soup simmer, the better it will be. With time, the meat will turn tender, soft, and buttery, the aromas will deepen, and the color will become as rich as the soup tastes.
Get the Best-Ever Pozole recipe.
Bean & Cheese Taquitos
These crispy, cheesy vegetarian taquitos are quick and easy to make, and are great for everything from a tasty appetizer to a low-key dinner alongside rice and salsa this Dia De Los Muertos. We're particularly proud of the green chile sour cream sauce—you might never serve Mexican food without it again.
Get the Bean & Cheese Taquitos recipe.
Candied Pepitas
We took inspiration from the traditional Dia de los Muertos candied pumpkin (or calabaza en tacha) for these pepitas. They're crispy, crunchy perfection with a dash of warm spice to make them ideal for snacking, tossing in salads, or topping desserts this November.
Get the Candied Pepitas recipe.
Horchata
This classic Mexican version, horchata de arroz, is made by soaking rice and almonds with cinnamon and blending everything together with milk and sweetener. You can easily make it vegan by sticking with water or a nut milk, and if you want to make it a more decadent treat for Dia de Los Muertos, add more sugar.
Get the Horchata recipe.
Queso Fundido
Queso fundido is a true party trick. It’s likely the lowest effort, highest reward party dip. Go for Mexican chorizo here instead of the Spanish, which is usually dried.
Get the Queso Fundido recipe.
Best-Ever Flan
Similar to crème brûlée or panna cotta, flan never goes out of style. The addition of egg yolks makes for a particularly rich version that's lovely for special occasions. (Psst...Make sure you're unmolding your flan onto plates with a small rim, so you don't lose any of the good stuff!)
Get the Best-Ever Flan recipe.
Concha Bread
Pan dulce means "sweet bread" in Spanish—think of these little breads as the brioche of Mexico. While not quite a Mexican dessert, conchas have a delicious sugary topping, often flavored with vanilla, chocolate, or cafe con leche. Try coloring the topping with bright colors to celebrate the Day of the Dead.
Get the Concha Bread recipe.
Salsa Verde Enchiladas
Cheesy, savory enchiladas can be a project. But mixing store-bought ingredients with fresh stuff speeds everything up without sacrificing flavor. The major “hack” here is using jarred salsa verde but punching up the flavor (and nutrients!) by adding a whole bunch of cilantro, fresh garlic, and jalapeños. It gives it a made-from-scratch taste but in a fraction of the time.
Get the Salsa Verde Enchiladas recipe.
Best-Ever Guacamole
Everyone has opinions about Mexico's most famous avocado-based dip: guacamole. Some, like us, keep it simple. We prefer to let the flavor of our avos shine. Others like to go crazy on the mix-ins: spices, tomatoes, garlic, etc. If that's your thing, this guacamole is the perfect jumping off point. Add whatever you like!
Get the Best-Ever Guacamole recipe.
Bean & Cheese Arepas
Here we’re sticking to a simple blueprint of basic arepas with easy fillings—black beans, cheese, avocado—but feel free to customize to your liking by switching up the cheese or your vegetarian filling (roasted sweet potato would be a delicious option).
Get the Bean & Cheese Arepas recipe.
Tres Leches Cake
Tres leches cake is a light and airy Latin American sponge cake that is welcome at any and all celebrations. It's basically the original poke cake, made extra decadent with sweetened condensed, evaporated, and whole milk.
Get the Tres Leches Cake recipe.
Chiles Rellenos
To keep the flavors clean, our version is baked and not fried. We broil the poblanos until they're blackened for an extra-smoky vibe, then fill them with a cheesy rice mixture that's honestly so delicious, it can be eaten on its own. Once baked to perfection, top it all off with tangy sour cream, fresh salsa, and cilantro—now that's a good stuffed pepper, upgraded.
Get the Chiles Rellenos recipe.
Churro Cookies
We are obsessed with churros and love making them at home, but sometimes we don't have the time to fry up a fresh batch. These cookies are the perfect solution. Caramel (or dulce de leche?) gets sandwiched between puff pastry and then tossed in cinnamon sugar for a simple and fast yet completely addicting treat.
Get the Churro Cookies recipe.
Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup
We load this tortilla soup up with extra protein by adding black beans, then throw in some vegetables (corn! bell peppers! onion!) for health and color, and flavor it all with canned fire-roasted tomatoes, which we love for their smokiness. We quick-fry tortillas strips at the very end for added crunch.
Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars
Traditionally a pillow-shaped deep-fried dough, sopapillas are the Mexican, cinnamon-sugar topped cousins to puff pastry. Naturally, it follows that sopapilla and cheesecake are a match made in heaven: Crispy, sweet dough sandwiching creamy, smooth cheesecake filling is a combination that can't be beat.
Get the Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars recipe.
Spicy Chicken Taquitos
A taquito is essentially a rolled taco with many of the topping like guacamole and sour cream on the outside. They're traditionally shallow-fried to get that beautifully crisp exterior. Our version is baked with an option to make them in the air fryer!
Get the Spicy Chicken Taquitos recipe.
Camille Lowder is the digital food producer at Delish, otherwise known as our resident queen of recipe galleries. Previously, she attended the Natural Gourmet Institute for culinary school and worked at/managed a number of New York restaurants. She loves anything vegan, foods masquerading as other foods (hello, cauliflower), and a well-used Oxford comma.
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