For this week’s What I Ate Wednesday, I thought I’d tell you about this new food that I had never heard of before. It’s called Cioppino and apparently it is famous in the San Francisco area and has spread to most major seaport areas. Well that explains why I had never heard of it…Colorado is very much landlocked. There are a few lakes and ponds and we get some fish flown in frozen, but as far as fresh seafood goes, Colorado is not the best place for it -and I don’t think Rocky Mountain Oysters count either 
So when I found this jar on sale for half off and a can of oysters, too, I thought well we can give it a whirl.
Canned Cioppino sauce and Oysters Half Off!
Cioppino is basically a seafood stew. It is a tomato based broth and you can add in carrots or celery or onions if you wish (we added a chopped carrot and celery stick). But the main components are all the various seafood items you want to throw in there: fish, crab, octopus, clams, oysters, shrimp etc. We found a package of mixed seafood items at the store for about $3.
Mixed Seafood
We also already had some frozen shrimp so we de-tailed them and threw them in as well. Our final item was whole crab legs which were delish! It reminded me of how much I LOVE crabmeat. We sometimes will get the imitation (of which there was some in the seafood mix), but real crab just blows the imitation stuff out of the water -haha).
Crab in the stew
The directions said to just crack it and throw it in, so we did. But in the future I think I would actually take the crab meat out, or just eat it separately. Breaking the crab apart was more messy than usual because of the tomato soup on it!
Cioppino and the crab on the side
Seafood is really healthy and low in fat. It’s high in protein and very filling without weighing you down. Paired with vegetables as in this stew, it is fantastic! Now that I’ve tried it starting from a jar, I might just try it again from scratch and save a lot of sodium. In any case, if you’ve never had cioppino and you like seafood, go for it!
Have you ever had cioppino? Have you had it in San Fran? What’s your favorite seafood item?