Ecuador's pickled-onion fish soup with yuca, tomato, and cilantro — the Pacific coast hangover cure of choice.
Encebollado is the Ecuadorian coastal classic: a rich tomato-and-cumin broth thickened with yuca (cassava), studded with chunks of albacore tuna, and crowned with a generous tangle of red onions cured in lime juice and salt. Eaten across Ecuador from 7 am onward — and especially Sunday mornings after a long Saturday night — it is the country's most famous hangover cure. The crucial element is the onion topping: thinly sliced red onions massaged with salt to wilt them, then drenched in lime and tossed with cilantro until they smell almost floral. The combination of hot fragrant broth, soft yuca, meaty tuna, and zinging onion is intentional restoration in a bowl.
Serves 4
Toss sliced red onions with 1 tsp salt; massage and let sit 10 minutes until limp. Rinse thoroughly to remove the harshness. Combine with lime juice, diced tomato, cilantro, and chili. Set aside while the soup cooks (the onions need at least 30 minutes to mellow).
Properly cured onions taste sweet and floral, not pungent — the rinse step is essential.
Heat oil. Sauté white onion 4 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, and annatto; bloom 1 minute. Stir in blended tomato; reduce 5 minutes until darker and pasty.
Pour in water and salt. Bring to a simmer. Slip tuna steaks into the broth and poach 12 minutes.
Lift tuna out. Flake into bite-size chunks. Set aside.
Add yuca to the simmering broth. Cook 25–30 minutes until very tender and starting to fall apart. Mash some yuca pieces against the pot to thicken the broth slightly.
Stir flaked tuna back in. Taste broth; adjust salt and lime. The soup should be deeply tomato-y, cumin-warm, and slightly thickened.
Ladle into deep bowls. Top each generously with the cured onion mix and its juices. Serve chifles and popcorn on the side to crumble in as desired.
Fresh yuca only — frozen yuca turns mushy and gritty. Look for unwaxed roots that snap cleanly.
The onion topping must rest 30+ minutes before serving — fresh-cut onion will taste raw and wreck the bowl.
Chifles and popcorn aren't a garnish gimmick — they're traditional crunch additions, much like crackers in clam chowder.
Encebollado de pescado: use any meaty white fish instead of tuna (mahi, marlin).
Spicy: blend an ají amarillo into the tomato base.
Add a peeled, halved hard-boiled egg per bowl in the Guayaquil style.
Refrigerate broth and tuna together up to 2 days. Make a fresh onion topping each time. Reheat broth gently — boiling toughens the tuna.
Encebollado is a 20th-century dish from Ecuador's Pacific coast, particularly the city of Guayaquil, where fishermen traditionally ate it as a morning meal after dawn catches. Its reputation as a hangover cure spread nationwide in the 1970s and 80s.
Frozen yuca is acceptable in a pinch (though grainier). Do not substitute potato — the texture and starch level are wrong, and the soup will not have the right body.
Technically yes, in oil packed, added at the end. But fresh albacore poached in the broth is the defining technique — canned tuna versions taste flat and overly fishy.
Salting wilts the onions and draws out their sharp sulfur compounds. Rinsing removes both the salt and the harshness, leaving them sweet, soft, and primed to soak up lime juice.
Ecuadorians swear by it — and there's logic: hot salty broth rehydrates, lime and onion deliver vitamin C, tuna provides protein, and yuca settles the stomach. Whether it works is up to your morning.
Per serving (520g / 18.3 oz) · 4 servings total
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