Not often used in Mexican cooking but occasionally in vinaigrette. Leaves and flowers eaten as a vegetable, sometimes steamed. Flavor like snap beans. Leaves added to tamales. Unique tangy flavor used in everything from salsa to mole, with cheese, in broth, rice, beans.
Seed has a very different flavor from the fresh leaf.
Leaf flavor lost through drying. The leaf membrane of the maguey is peeled and dried to produce a parchment-like material used as a roasting pouch for meats and poultry. Grows wild in parts of central and southern Mexico. Considered by many to be indispensable to a good pot of beans. Digestive, used for intestinal disorders.