The first time we went to Mercado Iñaquito we focused on fruits and veggies. This time we decided to be a little more adventurous and headed for the meat area. I wanted to make beef stew this week and we thought it would be fun to get some kind of seafood for dinner on Saturday. So far we’ve eaten both and neither of us has gotten sick so this might become a regular thing! It takes a little longer to go to Iñaquito than to the supermarket near our house, but everything feels fresher and the whole experience is way more fun and less stressful than standing in the massive lines at MegaMaxi. I have included a few pictures of what we bought and some things we didn’t….

Meat

Top Row: ribs and tongue
Bottom Row: stomach (I think), liver, feet

It’s a pretty big deal that I will eat chicken off a bone since this is something that used to gross me out. Cooking a cow foot is pretty much not something I want the experience of doing.

We were in search of chuck roast for the stew I made last night. The closest we could find was meat from the hip (at least that’s where the lady selling it pointed to on herself). What’s that called in English? It worked great and was delicious!
Overall it was very helpful to explain to the ladies working at the market that I was trying to make soup. Both the meat lady and the herb lady recommended good things (I didn’t know how to say thyme in Spanish so I just asked for something that would work in sopa de carne and I think she gave me some type of oregano).

Lots and lots of shrimps!

Lots and lots of fish!

We bought barracuda without knowing what it was. For future reference it is called picuda here in Ecuador.
It was a huge fish and the man behind the counter cut off two giant steaks for us.
It turned out okay, but barracuda is not quite my favorite fish so next time we will try something else….

like crab!

We really wanted to get crab for dinner on Saturday night! All these dudes were still alive and I watched one lady who was trying to move her display nearly lose a few as they attempted to escape.
Turns out all the individual crabs were sold out and we could only purchase a rack of 15. Seeing as that would be more than 7 crabs each we decided to wait for another time when we could invite friends over to share in the crab eating deliciousness.