10 Spanish Grocery Store Favorites

Ever since I first started traveling internationally, I have loved grocery shopping abroad. Walking the aisles and perusing all of the unfamiliar products taps into a unique form of culinary wanderlust for me. More so than any single restaurant, a foreign grocery store puts the culture of a place on display, with its shelves lined with seemingly endless intriguing unknowns. In Spain, the eye is caught on each visit by jars of flavored olives, different types of cheeses and cured meats, and varieties of fruits and vegetables that aren’t so common back home — among countless other products.

Over the past year I’ve spent about 5 months traveling around Spain. As much as I might have liked to eat in restaurants every day, that’s a bit out of my price range — though it is much more affordable there. I wouldn’t say that I am yet an expert in Spanish cuisine — there is still plenty for me to learn about the intricacies of regional specialties in particular — but after a few months of shopping and dining, I am starting to know my way around pretty well. Across the board, the food in Spain is excellent, and that applies not only to what you are served at a nice restaurant, but also what comes home with you in your grocery bags — but a little bit of inside knowledge never hurts.

As a disclaimer, this list is not meant to tell you the top ten best foods to buy in Spain, the ten things that you can’t miss in a Spanish grocery store, or anything like that. There is one item on this list that is regularly categorized as one of the best foods in the world, but most of them aren’t. The majority of this list is just things that I like to buy, listed in no particular order. I will say this, however: If you travel to Spain, buy these foods, and don’t enjoy them, I will be quite surprised.

1. Jamon Iberico (and other cured Iberico meats)

We’re just going to start with the heavy-hitter here and get it out of the way. Jamon Iberico is undoubtedly one of the finest foods in the world. That’s not my opinion, that’s culinary fact. There is a lot of excellent cured ham in Spain, but jamon Iberico is hands down the best. It has a flavor unlike anything else in the world, thanks not only to the care of the producers, but also the breed of the pig and the acorn-rich diet. It’s not the cheapest food at the shop by any means, but it’s cheaper here than it is elsewhere, and it is more than worth the expense. If you are ever in Spain, make sure that you take full advantage and eat plenty of it.

In this particular package, as you can see, there is more than just jamon. It also comes with thinly sliced chorizo, lomo (cured pork loin), and salchichon (which is essentially a salami). The jamon is, without a doubt, the star of the package, but the other meats are also delicious. Open a sampler like this alongside some cheese, olives, bread, and cold beer or tinto de verano, and you have a zero-effort aperitivo that you won’t soon forget.

2. Mojo Picon Olives

Unlike the jamon, I had no knowledge of these olives before arriving. I bought them on a whim, just working my way down the shelf at the local market with a different jar each visit. As soon as I put the first one in my mouth, though, I knew I’d found something. In truth, I actually laughed and said aloud to the empty apartment, “That’s the best fucking olive I’ve ever eaten.” As you might imagine, there are many delicious olive varieties in Spain, but these are exceptional even among that crowd. Mojo picon is a spicy red pepper sauce from the Canary Islands that is quite similar to a romesco sauce. With these olives, it appears that they just add a bit of that to the brine, but the depth of flavor that it gives the olives is unreal.

3. Chorizo

You probably know Spanish chorizo. You might even have bought the $10 American-made variety that can sometimes be found in U.S. grocery stores. It’s not bad. But it’s also not anywhere near as good as what you’ll find in every grocery store in Spain. There are a lot of different ways to buy chorizo there, from thin deli slices to these sausages-on-a-string, and you can buy either dulce or picante — though little in Spain is actually spicy. This is just a store-brand €2 chorizo, and it’s pretty delicious. There is certainly better quality chorizo out there, if you want to hunt it down, but the cheap one that you can pick up in any grocery store ain’t bad at all.

4. Banderillas

If, like me, you enjoy all things pickled, these are a revelation. The name “banderilla” directly translates to “small flag,” but here I believe it is a reference to the short, colorfully decorated spears used in bullfighting. Fittingly, it is a jar full of skewers, each one with a variety of pickled delights of different colors on it. In the picante variety — I don’t care for sweet pickles, so I haven’t tried the dulce — each skewer has an olive and a slice of gherkin as well as a pearl onion, a slice of sweet pepper, and a slice of spicy pepper. You can eat each item on its own and really savor it, or pop them all in your mouth at once and enjoy the melange. They’re delicious either way.

5. Fuet

Just like the Spanish chorizo, this Catalan cured sausage can also be found in every grocery store and also only costs about €2. This one, though, is even better. The name translates to “whip,” a fairly apt descriptor for this thin dry cured sausage made with minced pork and bacon. The flavoring is simple, relying on just black pepper and garlic to enhance the pork, but it is exquisite. Apparently the same or a similar sausage is eaten throughout Southern Europe, from France to Greece, and the only major difference is that sometimes the flavor is enhanced with anise. Once you taste it, you will understand why it is so popular throughout the region. This is probably the best cured sausage I’ve ever had, especially for the cost. There might have been better one-off artisanal offerings, but at this price point, nothing really compares to fuet.

6. Tinto de Verano

This is the summertime wine cocktail that Spanish people actually drink. You will spot sangria on the menus in the tourist districts, but a tinto de verano is something that you can order in any bar. The drink is a delightfully refreshing mixture of equal parts cheap red wine and lemon soda. If you like it a little less sweet, as I do, you can substitute club soda for half of the lemon soda. It is cold, sweet, and very refreshing — a perfect way to enjoy red wine during the hotter part of the year (hence the name, effectively “red wine of the summer”). 

You don’t have to go to a bar to get yourself a tinto de verano, though. You don’t even have to buy all of the ingredients separately. At the grocery store in Spain, you can pick up cans of the stuff, or a two-liter bottle if you’re feeling especially thirsty. It is, essentially, low-alcohol (about 4% ABV) wine-flavored soda pop — delightful.

Now, I wouldn’t suggest drinking tinto de verano all night, as that sugar-fueled hangover might keep you in bed the entire next day. A cold glass or two with ice on a hot afternoon, though, that really is spectacular. And, unlike some of the other items on this list, this one is quite simple to replicate back home — I drink them all the time in the summer.

7. Bread and Olive Oil

A simple serving of bread, olive oil, and salt is one of my absolute favorite things on this planet. I could eat it with every meal — and when I’m in Spain, I basically do. Compared to the U.S., no matter where you buy your bread in Spain, the quality is pretty great. Stopping by the convenience store in the middle of the afternoon, you can grab a still-warm loaf of freshly baked bread for less than a euro. You could also stop by a bakery and pick up a really incredible loaf, but honestly the bread is all pretty good, especially when you get it fresh. Pair that with a bit of salt and some of the best olive oil you’ve ever tasted — a bottle of the good stuff might run you about €6 — and you have just about the perfect base for any meal. 

8. Horchata de Chufa

Alright, so this one is not actually a favorite, but I was very excited to see it at the store. For folks in the U.S., horchata is a well-known drink, but the rice-based, cinnamon-infused version of the agua fresca typically available at Mexican restaurants there is not actually the original form. The original horchata — horchata de chufa — is made with the same technique, but uses tiger nuts as the base.

Contrary to the name, tiger nuts are not actually nuts, but rather small wrinkly tubers about the size of a hazelnut that grow from a species of sedge. Using these tubers to make a sort of non-dairy milk is said to have first been practiced in Northern Africa, though it was in Valencia that the drink really caught on. The culture of Spain traveled with its colonizers, and thus horchata came to be known around the world, though elsewhere it is often made with more locally abundant ingredients. As mentioned above, in Mexico it became primarily a rice drink, though it is also sometimes made with melon seeds; in Puerto Rico, a form of horchata is made with sesame seeds and coconut milk; and elsewhere in Central America, horchata is made using different seeds, flowers, and all sorts of other ingredients.

The little boxes of horchata de chufa on the shelves in Spanish grocery stores are the original ingredients, a tiger nut milk flavored with lemon, cinnamon, and plenty of sugar. While they definitely don’t belong on my list of favorite Spanish groceries, they are an interesting culinary experience. If you like horchata back home, it’s worth picking up a box to see where it came from — just don’t look for it to taste like you expect.

9. Cheese

In general, the cheeses in Spain are delineated differently what you find in U.S. grocery stores. Rather than the named styles — think cheddar, jack, colby, Swiss, etc. — the label instead focuses on descriptors like the type of milk used, age of the cheese, and other production techniques. You will still find things like Gouda, but for domestic Spanish cheeses, the majority of the products at the supermarket are sort of in the style of a manchego. Technically, the name Manchego only applies to sheep’s milk cheese from La Mancha, but throughout Spain there are many similar cheeses. The label on a wedge will have descriptors like “tierno,” meaning tender, or “curado” and “semicurado,” referring to the length of aging, as well as an indication of the origin of the milk. There are similarly styled cheeses made with cow’s milk, goat’s milk, sheep’s milk, or a combination of the three.

It’s pretty tough to go wrong here. Every variety that I sampled was delicious. For example, the “tostada,” or “toasted,” cheese made with three milks was a complex and delicious hard cheese, whereas a simple semicurado is excellent for eating in larger quantities for aperitivo, or on a sandwich with cured meats and olive oil. My suggestion would be to try a different cheese every time you stop into the market and figure out which varieties you prefer.

10. Fabada Asturiana

When traveling solo and staying in hostels, finding a good canned dinner is a real win. Sure, you can jockey for space and time in the shared kitchen, but nothing’s worse than doing all of your shopping, wedging the groceries into the corner of the communal fridge, and then realizing at dinner time that the whole hostel has turned out for a cooking class, and the entire stove is occupied. With a can of fabada Asturiana, though, you only need a few minutes on a small burner — or a bowl and a microwave — to make yourself dinner, and despite coming out of a can, it is really pretty good.

I ate an embarrassing number of these cans during my time in Spain, and putting it as the anchor in my list of Spanish grocery favorites might be simply deepening that embarrassment. There is a part of me that fears that it might appear to a Spaniard like if someone visiting the U.S. were to say to you, “I’ve really been enjoying the work of this one American chef — I think his name is Boyardee.” Cringe as it may be, however, this stuff is delicious.

To my credit, when I had my own kitchen, I did learn to make fabada Asturiana myself, and it was better — but these cans are a lifesaver when you don’t have time and space to do it properly. Fabada Asturiana is a simple dish from Asturias of stewed white beans with pork belly, chorizo, and morcilla — a type of blood sausage — as well as Spanish standards like garlic, olive oil, and paprika. It is rich and delicious, perfect for the cooler months.

While the cans are surprisingly good, the store by my apartment also sold a small packet of those three meats for a few euros, making it very easy to whip up a whole pot of my own. I added some personal touches, like a few sprigs of wild rosemary plucked on a hike, and it is definitely a recipe that I will be revisiting— as well as one that I could eat just about every day.

There you have it, my incomplete and deeply subjective list of favorite foods to buy at the grocery store in Spain. Like I said before, this is all just my opinion, but, well, I know a thing or two about food. You might not like everything on the list, but I bet you’ll enjoy most of it.