Butchers
This will be your most harrowing shopping experience in Mexico
unless you go to one of the few American-style butchers. Don't expect
saran-wrapped sterility. Blood and guts are the usual scenario.
When we lived in Playa del Carmen, the butcher killed a pig every
other day or so and hung the bleeding carcass in front of his shop.
Here in Cancun there is a municipal slaughterhouse. All meat is
government inspected, but the butcher shops are still quite gruesome.
Supermarkets are now the best place to buy meat, but don't expect
American quality.
Mexican cuts are considerably different from American, both in
flavor and shape. The local beef is astoundingly bad. The cows are
a cross of Bengal tiger and goat so that they will survive in the
tropics. They feed them fish meal and garbage and make them do aerobic
exercises.
Ground beef is usually just dreadful -- old scraps of leftovers
and dead fat. If you must have hamburgers, select the best cut of
beef you can find and have the butcher grind it for you -- molido.
Good Pork
Pork, on the other hand, is usually excellent. The best cut is
lomo de puerco, loin of pork, which you can have as chops -- chuletas
-- or filleted in a single piece -- fileteado en trozo, saving the
bones for making stock.
Chickens
Don't accept a chicken from the counter but ask for one from the
refrigerator -- el refrigerador. Veal is usually sold as milanesa.
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