Ecuador travel Carchi & Imbabura food

Gastronomy in Carchi and Imbabura

The menu for typical dishes is quiet long; we’ll start off explaining a few of them. Carnes coloradas, papas con cuero, a variety of cheeses, cuy asado, llapingachos (potato tortillas with cheese and achoite), arrope de mora (raspberry jam), nogada, helados de paila (Ecuadorian fruit ice-cream considered de be the best in the world), chicha (alcoholic beverage made from a variety of corn, also made rice and fruits).

Carnes coloradas, have anchorite, seasoned and dried in the sun before grilling. This is usually accompanied with mote, cooked potatoes, and cheese sauce.

Choclotandas o humitas: young corn is engrained y grounded, mixed with eggs, butter, fat, and cheese. It is cooked in vapor, covered with the corn leaves.

Tortillas de maiz, usually cooked on city streets.

Empanadas de morocho: Morocho is a type of corn which is ground, filled with pork or beef, along with refried onions, carrots, and peas. It is fried in oil.

Mondongo or known as foot soup; it’s a soup prepared with cow feet, peanuts, milk, mote, and refried onions and anchorite.

Chancho con mote y morcillas, Otavalo specialty.

Nogadas: Sweets made by using brown sugar and nogal fruit.

Arrope de mora: Raspberry juice, sugar and a bit lemon, prepared with very little water

Helados de Paila: The secret in these famous ice-cream is that only pure fruit juice and egg whites are used, battered in a bronze pan over ice, which is traditional in the province of Cayambe and their glaciers, including Cotacachi (when they still had glaciers). They’re usually accompanied with quesadillas and barquillos.

Champús: Made with grounded morocho and fermented for a week. Cooked mote is added, boiled and seasoned with, clavo de pimento and pimiento dulce.

Café de haba: Made with grounded toasted coffee beans, habas, peas and cebada in equal proportions and brown sugar, then grounded and filtered to boiling water.

Chicha del Yamor y de Jora:  It’s a drink made with fermented corn and brown sugar y aromatic waters. While la chichi de jora uses yellow corn. La chichi de Yamor instead uses seven kinds of corn, white, yellow, black, white morocho, black morocho, chulpi, and popcorn kernels.