After over a year of non-stop living and traveling throughout central Mexico we’ve found the need to be resourceful and flexible when planning meals to cook at home. We love Mexico and Mexican food but also love cooking our long time favorite American, Thai, Indian and Italian dishes. With a few adaptations and changes we’ve managed to enjoy cooking a variety of great food at home, in the RV, with Mexican ingredients. We’ll share here with you some of what we’ve experienced and learned.
The pros of shopping for groceries in Mexico includes the availability and abundance of super fresh, locally grown/raised/produced items especially at the local Mexican mercados. There are fruits that are tree ripened that you cannot find anywhere else…we’ve had the opportunity to try quite a few new ones we’d never seen before. At the coasts fresh and fresh frozen shrimp, fish and octopus are plentiful and many times at VERY low prices compared to what we had to pay in the U.S. Traditional Mexican ingredients are also very affordable, of great quality and available everywhere. Examples:
Shrimp
Recently we purchased really large frozen prawns for 200 pesos a kilo. This is actually a higher price than other beach locales since we are currently in a pretty remote area. Since the shrimp had heads and shells, 1 kilo (about 2.2lbs) produced about 1lb of shrimp meat after we cleaned it. That makes it about $12.50 U.S. for a cleaned, shelled pound of shrimp meat compared to $25lb for smaller shrimp (shell still on) for Mexican shrimp in the U.S. purchased at a decent fish market.
Fresh corn tortillas
Machine made corn tortillas can be found in every neighborhood either from local tiendas (small Mexican stores), from vendors who bike and walk through or at the local tortillerillas where they are produced. The tortillas are made from fresh corn masa that is either made from dried powdered maize or whole dried maize that goes through the nixtalization process and is then ground into masa. Some more rural locations have women who make the tortillas “al mano” or by hand, from the dried masa flour. Those tortillas, understandably, cost a little more but also have more character. We’ve paid anything from an average of 18-23 pesos a kilo or around 1/2 peso for 1 tortilla (about $1U.S. a kilo) and 2 pesos (about 6 cents U.S.) a tortilla for handmade.
Fruits & Veggies
Overall, standard fruits and veggies that are grown in Mexico are very inexpensive. The standard fruit and veggie stand will carry: limes, white and red onions, carrots, garlic, avocado, tomatoes, cilantro, squash, chilies, oranges, bananas, pineapples, green beans, broccoli, mushrooms, potatoes, corn, nopales (cactus leaf) & tomatillos… There seems to be only ONE type of carrot, one or two types of summer squash, one type of potato, one or two types of tomatoes and two types of limes at almost all mercados and stores.
So if you love the standard brown “russet” baking potatoes you will have to adjust to using white rose potatoes which are much lower in starch and more suited to frying and stews. And the squash that we find are the striped Italian variety that seem to mostly come in the oblong shape but sometimes can be found in a round shape. But that’s it, no yellow squash, no patty-pan squash… The squash are perfectly good and tasty but it can be strange if you were used to more variety in the U.S.
Corn on the cob can also be a bit of a disappointment for people used to the sweet hybrid varieties in the U.S. Most corn in Mexico is more like what we used to call “field corn” in that it’s not that sweet and it’s pretty starchy and firm. It’s suited to roasting and also cooking in stews but not so great when just boiled and eaten with butter.
And the oranges most commonly found here (hell, the ONLY oranges) are a variety that are more green skinned than orange.* They are perfectly delicious and suited more to juicing (similar to Valencias) but that’s the only variety we’ve found, so far. Pomelos are fairly common and also delicious (more so than grapefruit) and sweet but more suited to juicing (“Salty Dog” cocktails, anyone?)
Meats
Generally we like to find a reputable butcher for sourcing meats…we kind of steer away from the meat stalls at the big mercados because many lack refrigeration and proper handling. Mind you, a lot of the meat is freshly butchered right before market day AND we HAVE purchased from these stalls on occasion but we tend to error on the side of caution.
And meat cuts in Mexico differ greatly from standard cuts people are used to in the U.S. so it makes sense to, ahem, “bone up” on both the cuts and the Spanish words to describe them before heading to the butcher shop. Also keep in mind that you might not see what you want and will need to know a few phrases in Spanish to descibe things like, “This thick”, “Not too lean”, “Cut in cubes”, “Cut in half”, etc. Hardly any of the people at these little shops speak English, especially in the non-touristy towns, so communication can be a challenge for us gringos.
Of the cuts that are on display in meat cases you will notice that most are much thinner than you are used to seeing in the U.S. This is because 1) Much of the beef is grassfed so tougher 2) Meat like carne asada, pork chops, steaks is generally roasted on hot coals quickly on a fire. We just kind of adapted and started learning to cook in this way which has made life much easier!
For chicken (and sometimes for pork) you will need to go to a separate tienda…they seldom sell them all at one place, in the traditional Mexican neighborhoods, anyway.
Dairy
Eggs
Fresh eggs are plentiful and cheap all over Mexico. However they may be a bit different from what you are used to in the U.S.. First of all, it’s not common to find eggs by the dozen in cartons unless you are shopping at a big box grocery store. Rather, you will find them in large cardboard flats sold BY THE KILO, not by the dozen. So you can buy 12 eggs but the cost will be per kilo and they will be put on a scale to price them. Then they will generally just be put into a plastic bag and tied up so be prepared to bring your own carton or just carefully place them on top of your other purchases for the ride home. The egg shells are pretty tough so don’t worry too much about transporting them like this. One other odd thing; eggs are NOT refrigerated in Mexico at all…even at the big box stores. They are left unwashed so are shelf stable for weeks w/o refrigeration. People in the U.S. who have raised their own eggs know all about this although some city dwellers may be a little freaked out.
Note: Turns out that the U.S. is one of the few places in the world where eggs are pre-washed necessitating refrigeration.
Things that you generally will NOT find at small Mexican grocery stores:
- Not many of the usual U.S. brands of beer & alcohol and if you find some they will cost more than in the U.S. due to import fees.
- Half-and-half for coffee is not to be found anywhere–we use shelf stable “Media Crema” instead
- Butter or sour cream is generally not to be found at many of the smaller stores
- Good tortilla chips are strangely rare in Mexico. Restaurants have them but they are made fresh, to order.
- Milk chocolate (Mexican chocolate is very different than chocolate in the U.S.)
- Popcicles and ce cream (gotta go to a special, local store for that…look for a Paletería)
- Sliced Bread (Mexican tortas are made with fresh rolls)
- Beef hotdogs (although you will find tons of pork hotdogs that are a very strange pink color…sort of like the color of band-aids)
We regularly run to the nearest city/larger town to do stock ups on grocery and non-food items. It’s just convenient and often we can purchase things there that we would otherwise have to order from Amazon Mexico…provided we are not staying in too rural of a locale! Generally our stock ups happen about every 2 weeks and in between we just plan to supplement pantry and frozen items with locally purchased veggies, fruits, tortillas and fish.
Luxury Items
We keep our eyes open when we go to do stock ups at the large grocery stores like Soriana, Bodega, Walmart, and especially Chedraui & La Comer (the last two have the most gourmet/U.S. imported products). That’s where we can sometimes find hard-to locate stuff we need like the dill pickles, olives, artichoke hearts, beef hotdogs, Asian noodles, gluten free pasta, Asian condiments (like Sriracha), whole beef roasts, organic bar soap and hair conditioner, diced canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, to just list a few…
Amazon Mexico is your friend!
After all is said and done we also end up ordering some of our spices and ingredients on Amazon Mexico to be shipped to us at our RV park residences. First off, not all RV park destinations have “official” addresses so we generally wait to do our ordering until we are in places that are less rural that easily receive packages from a variety of shippers. Grocery items that we consistently order via Amazon Mexico include:
- Bar soap! (we like organic, natural, herbal soaps)
- Exotic spices (Thai, Indian, etc.)
- Exotic teas (I love this Jasmine Pearl green tea but it’s now become too spendy for me to justify buying online to import and ship)
- Gluten free products (can be spendy if imported!)
- Herbs for making salves (spendy when imported from the U.S.)
- Vitamins and supplements (again, can be very expensive when imported)
We recommend going on Amazon Mexico and trying to find products that are NOT imported because you will find that the import fees can be pretty crazy expensive at times.
*Why are Mexican oranges green?
Turns out oranges develop chlorophyll as they mature on the tree. Then cool temperatures cause the chlorophyll to die off, turning the skins orange. But a sudden rise in temperature can turn them green, sometimes overnight. Especially near the equator, where temps are consistently high, ripe oranges are commonly green. Ethylene gas can be used to turn the green skin orange, but that’s not customary for fruit sold in Mexico, where most oranges are regionally grown.
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