Ecuador Cuisine Encebollado fish soup hangover cure

Encebollado is a great remedy for hangovers. Its works because the fish oil helps get rid of the free radicals that result from the breakdown of alcohol in the body. Restaurant owners in Ecuador often sell the soup in the morning for this reason, so if you get up early you will see a few sore heads ha ha although it is versatile enough to work for lunch and dinner, too.

Encebollado has to be my favourite dish out here i could live off the stuff, it  is the national dish of Ecuador, where it originated. not to hard to make, encebollado has only four primary ingredients: fish, tomatoes, onions and yuca. The soup is both pungent and spicy in flavor.

The base of encebollado is a mix of tomatoes and onions, and the Spanish word encebollado is roughly translated as "onion fish soup." This mix, known as sofrito, also calls for spices common to the Ecuadorian region, such as cumin, chili and cilantro. Salt also is included. In some versions, the cook also adds some fresh chili peppers.

Albacora, or tuna, is the traditional encebollado fish. One reason for this is that tuna is so plentiful in the waters near Ecuador. With tuna, a common fish, as the primary protein, encebollado is a relatively inexpensive soup.

In addition to the sofrito and tuna, encebollado recipes include yuca. Yuca is a root vegetable found in much of South America. A highly coarse and fibrous plant, yuca provides the starch for the soup and is a major source of carbohydrates.

To make this simple fish soup, one first prepares the base. This requires frying the tomatoes, onions and spices in some oil. Only medium heat is required during this step.


After you have done the base,  add water to it and boil the tuna for about 15 minutes until it is cooked all the way through. then add the cilantro to the resultant fish broth during this process. Then the tuna is taken out and drained, and the yuca is boiled in the fish broth until the roots are tender but firm. After the yuca roots are cooked, they are removed from the broth so that their coarse strings can be removed and the roots chopped. Adding the yuca and tuna back to the broth with some salt completes the main part of the fish soup.

You can also  add pickled onions and tomato to the batch. Salsa sometimes is used in addition to or in place of these toppings. Another option is topping the soup with some additional chili pepper slices. you can sprinkle the dish with a little lime juice, and finally add chifles to the mix tastes lush! give it a go tell me what you think thanks for looking!