28/12/2025
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Why I always buy meat from the wet market instead of the supermarket or modern meat shops...
1. Fresh and local. At least where I live, you can guarantee that the meat is fresh and local (sourced within a few kilometers). An important caveat is that you have to buy as early as possible, ideally early in the morning before breakfast. That's when the freshly-butchered batch arrives.
2. Transparent. They're not hiding anything in chillers. If the meat is not fresh, you can smell it from six feet away. You will know fresh from not fresh even without touching anything. By afternoon, the skin will shrink and change in texture, so you know exactly what you're getting. The seller themselves are transparent. If you're a regular, they will not say the meat is fresh if it's already been frozen or refrigerated.
3. Supports small hog raisers. In our area, wet market meat sellers don't source from large, corporate farms. They tap local backyard raisers who produce top-notch quality meat.
As always, there are a lot of caveats to this. I am fortunate enough to live in a place where all of the above is true. If I just drive 7 kilometers to the big town nearby, I can't make the same guarantees, mostly because their meat section smells like the fresh/frozen section of the old Robinsons Supermarket in Pagadian City. Eew. So, largely, buying in meatshops where the meat is chilled will still be your safest bet. But if you can guarantee that your area is like ours, then go ahead and support your local wet market meat sellers.
Shout out to Pampilo Lechon & Food Package for their consistent commitment to quality. Yes, they are firstly a meat seller.