Introduction | Typical Food

Family Meals

Families use to eat together. In the house live parents and kids or sometimes the grandparents with the children and grandchildren, families in Ecuador are numerous. Normally the single kids live at home until they get married, no matter their age.

For breakfast normally there is a cup of coffee, caffe-au-lait or chocolate for the small children, little rolls of bread, mermelade, fruit juice. Depending on the region people accompany all this with eggs, rice, fried meat or fried fish, mandioc or green banana tortillas or empanadas, stuffed with cheese or little pieces of fried pork called “chicharron” or chicken.

The new tendency of nourishment that contemplates a more healthy way of eating, has reached this side of the world too. It is everyday more common to have for breakfast cereals, yogurt, soy or low fat milk, oatmeal, kumis, portions of natural fruit, granola.

To all this we should add that Ecuadorian mothers have created a long list of other healthy and energetic hot and cold beverages called “coladas” which is a mixture of milk or water and fruits with the flour of the different cereals like barley, castilla rice, oats and many kinds of corn. This is probably and indigenous tradition and it normally happens in the highlands where the cereals are harvested. Soups are also created with those flours.

If you have the chance try: colada de machica, colada de semola, tapioca, sagu, pineapple colada (not the one with alcohol), green banana colada, quaker, arroz de leche, morocho, champus, etc.

Lunch and Dinner have normally 3 courses: a hot soup, the main dish with normally is rice with any kind of meat and salad. For dessert: fruits in syrup or other.

For drink natural fruit juice or “chicha”.

In the jungle the “chicha” is a fermented beverage made with mandioc, and in the highlands it is made with corn, also called “chicha de jora”. The natives of the jungle invite you “chicha” as welcome drink, when you accept it you become their friend.