Many people will pick up a shot glass or a postcard from each city they visit. But if you’re anything like us, you’ll probably want to fill your suitcases with something else—food. Luckily, when it comes to taking home food souvenirs from Spain, you have plenty of options to choose from in Madrid.
With a culture that revolves around meal times and socializing, Spain makes it all too easy to spend your entire trip to Madrid eating and drinking your way through the city. The Arab and Mediterranean influences present in Spain make for typical foods in Madrid that will wow your senses.
Whether you’re shopping for friends, family, or yourself, here are the best food souvenirs you must not miss, and the best places to get these quality goodies to take back home.
Olives and extra virgin olive oil
These two products alone are enough to convince any foodie to book a flight to Spain. Spanish olive oil often gets dubbed “liquid gold,” and for good reason. With half of the world’s olive oil in any given year coming from Spain, it’s safe to say we know what we’re doing. Of course, all that oil comes from some of the world’s best olives.
When we say that olives and olive oil are everywhere here in Spain, we mean everywhere. Spaniards will eat olive oil on toast for breakfast, cook with a heavy hand of the stuff for every meal, and snack on a tapa of olives with their caña at every bar you walk into.
Most of Spain’s olives and olive oil come from the south, but you can find these typical food souvenirs from Spain anywhere in the capital. If you want to know where to buy olive oil in Madrid, we recommend the Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero shop. It’s actually the official olive oil store of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture!
While you’re there, don’t forget to pick up a jar of Madrid’s own Campo Real olives. Serve them in a dish with some beer, sherry wine, or vermouth before a dinner party, and you’ll be well on your way to opening a Spanish bar in your own home.
Jamón ibérico de bellota
You haven’t really tried ham until you’ve tried Spanish acorn-fed Iberian ham. This stuff is the best of the best. But what makes it so different from your average deli ham?
There are two factors that make jamón ibérico de bellota one of our favorite food souvenirs from Spain (or, let’s be honest, one of our favorite foods, in general). Those are the breed of the pig and its diet.
Black Iberian pigs are native to—you guessed it—the Iberian peninsula. For this particular variety of ham, the pigs roam free range on rolling oak-dotted landscapes known as dehesas, where they forage for rich and nutty acorns. The hams undergo a curing process that lasts for at least 36 months. All this leaves you with an unbelievably flavorful ham that practically melts in your mouth.
You can buy jamón ibérico in Madrid at many gourmet shops, but our go-to place is Charcutería Ismael at the Antón Martín Market, run by our friend Jesús. He’s been working in the ham industry for much of his life and is always happy to help share the jamón love!
Unfortunately, Americans cannot take jamón back home, as customs restrictions strictly prohibit bringing meat into the country. We recommend saving yourself the potential hassle at the airport and ordering it online from a US-based Spanish food retailer. If you’re not American, do check your own country’s restrictions, just in case.
Saffron and paprika
Spanish food is known for being on the mild side, but it does incorporate aromatics quite brilliantly. The full-bodied parsley in steamed clams, a dash of smoked Spanish paprika on Galician-style octopus, and subtle saffron in paella take seemingly simple plates to new levels of succulence.
As you explore the gourmet shops (our favorite is Spicy Yuli) and markets in Madrid, check out the selection of spices and buy whatever unique flavors spark your interest. To make sure your version of your favorite Spanish dish comes out just as it would here in Spain, two spices are especially crucial: smoked paprika (pimentón) and saffron (azafrán).
Smoked Spanish paprika is one of our favorite food souvenirs from Spain. The paprika from the small town of La Vera is the best (look for pimentón de La Vera). You can find it in sweet (dulce), semi-sweet (semi-dulce), and hot (picante) varieties.
Saffron is famous for being the most expensive spice in the world. Here in Spain, it grows on the fertile plains of Castilla-La Mancha, not far from Madrid. This makes it much less expensive than it would be abroad. A few strands go a long way to add a beautiful pop of color and flavor to dishes like paella.
Spanish wine is much lesser known than that of our French neighbors, and infinitely more difficult to find abroad. And, if you can find a nice bottle in your local store, you better believe it will be ridiculously overpriced.
That’s not the case here in Spain. We’re home to 70 protected wine regions, with Rioja being undoubtedly the best known. But there’s a whole world of excellent Spanish wines to discover—from the sun-drenched sherries of Andalusia to the bold, lesser-known reds of Toro, all the way up to the rolling cava vineyards of Catalonia (Have you heard about our Montserrat & Cava Winery tour day trip from Barcelona?).
As a bonus, it’s easy to get excellent value for your money when buying this particular food souvenir in Spain. Head to a local shop like Madrid & Darracott or Vinoteca Vides to get personalized recommendations from people who live and breathe Spanish wine.
Paella rice & pans
Paella is arguably Spain’s most famous dish. Originally from Valencia, it traditionally incorporated rice, rabbit, chicken, and beans.
Nowadays, almost every family has their own recipe, based on their tastes and the regional ingredients available. But every Spaniard you speak to will likely agree on one thing: a good pan and the right rice are non-negotiable.
Unfortunately for those who don’t call Spain home, these two key paella components can be tough to find abroad. We recommend grabbing a paella pan to take back with you. You want a wide, shallow pan that will allow you to spread the rice out in a thin, crispy layer.
Most paella dishes use bomba rice, a round short-grain rice grown on the east coast of Spain. It can hold three times more liquid than other varieties, yet still hold its own shape. You can buy bomba rice at any Madrid grocery store (or grocery store in Spain!), and paella pans wherever homeware and kitchen supplies are sold. Get both and you’ll be well on your way to cooking the perfect paella, no matter where you do it.
If you really want to impress someone back home with your Spanish cooking skills, check out our Paella and Tapas Cooking Class in Madrid. After a guided visit to a local market, you’ll head to a picturesque restaurant where a local chef will show you how to cook paella. This is definitely an unforgettable experience!
Update Notice: This post was updated on January 3, 2024.
Can’t decide which one of these fabulous food souvenirs from Spain to get? We’ve got an even better idea: get the gourmand in your life a Devour Tours gift certificate. It won’t take up any room in your luggage, it never expires, and it can be accessed in seconds. They’ll have you to thank for the culinary adventure of a lifetime in one of Europe’s most delicious destinations.
This post might include affiliate links. That means that if you purchase something we recommend, we may earn a small commission (which we’ll definitely spend on tapas). Rest assured that we only recommend a place or company to buy food souvenirs from Spain if we honestly love it.
