Posole/Pozole--Cook-Off 29

[MarkinHouston]

"Fresh" nixtamal from Mi Tienda, Central Market's Latino cousin, formed the basis of an excellent batch of posole this weekend. I soaked the fresh hominy (is this the correct terminology?) for 6 hours and then simmered for two hours until soft while still retaining some texture. I used the following recipe with a homemade red chile sauce, which recipe follows.

Tried and True Posole

For the Pork:

3 lbs pork shoulder

about 6 cups lightly salted water

1 medium onion, stuck with 2 cloves

8 cloves garlic, peeled

2 tsp peppercorns

2 tsp cumin seed

2 tsp oregano

Place meat in saucepan, barely cover with water, add

remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium

heat. Skim foam that rises, and cover pan. Reduce

heat to simmer. Simmer gently for 1 hour, do not

allow the water to boil. Turn off heat and let pork

cool in the broth.

Cut meat into 1 inch cubes.

Continuing with the Posole:

2 onions, chopped

8 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 cup lard

2 tsp each (or to taste) of

black pepper, ground cumin, cloves, and cayenne, powdered chipotle chile

6 cups prepared posole or canned hominy, drained and rinsed

6 cups pork broth, degreased and strained

2 cups chopped poblano chilies

salt, if needed

Garnishes

Sauté onion and garlic in the lard until they wilt and

start to brown. Add spices, stir for a minute, then

stir in the pork, precooked posole or hominy, broth,

and green chilies . Cook at a simmer, covered,

for an hour.

Garnishes (any/all/optional)

homemade salsa, red or green

finely shredded cabbage

thinly sliced radishes

chunks of ripe avocado

chopped tomato (in season)

lime wedges

shredded Monterey Jack

Serve with warm tortillas.

Red Chile Sauce

10 whole dried cascabel and ancho chilies

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup (5 oz/155 g) finely chopped onions

2 cloves garlic, minced

about 2 cups (16 fl oz/500 ml) chicken stock

2 tablespoons lard or vegetable oil

salt to taste

Preheat an oven to 300º F. Place the chilies in a heavy skillet and

roast them dry in the hot oven for 3--4

minutes, being careful not to let them

burn. Fill a pot just large enough to hold

the chilies with water; bring the water to a

boil and remove the pot from the heat. Add

the roasted chilies to the hot water and,

using a weight such as a pot lid, keep them

submerged until they are soft, about 20 or

30 minutes. Remove the chilies from the

water, stem, seed and tear them into strips.

Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over

low heat; add the onion and sauté until

browned, about 5 minutes.

Put the chili strips, sautéed onion, garlic

and 1 cup of the chicken stock into a food

processor or a blender and puree until

smooth; strain.

Heat the lard or vegetable oil in a heavy

skillet over medium heat. Add the chili

mixture to the hot oil and cook, stirring,

for about 5 minutes. Add the chicken until

the sauce is the desired consistency. Add

salt to taste. Cover and refrigerate until

ready to use. Keep 2--3 days, refrigerated.

Makes about 2 cups (16 fl oz/500 ml)

[StanSherman]

I was browsing this thread and decided to pick-up some of Rancho Gordo’s Posole as we went through Napa last week. I’m glad we did for a couple of reasons. First I realized that a very good family friend has the Nut Company in the same complex and I hadn’t seen her in several years. Our parents were friends before we were born and still are today.

I’ve been working my way through “Charcuterie” and have lots of pieces of smoked meats hanging around. I put one together today with a little bacon, pastrami and smoked lamb sausage. Very tasty! It seems that this is a recipe that can get over-thought or am I missing something?

[rancho_gordo]

I was browsing this thread and decided to pick-up some of Rancho Gordo’s Posole as we went through Napa last week.  I’m glad we did for a couple of reasons.  First I realized that a very good family friend has the Nut Company in the same complex and I hadn’t seen her in several years.  Our parents were friends before we were born and still are today.

←

Hi Stan. Was I there? Did we meet? We had a lot of visitors at the warehouse last week. Was I nice? Incredibly good looking? The Napa Nuts folks are great and supply the pumpkin seeds for my Rio Fuego hot sauce.

Glad you got to stop in!

[StanSherman]

Hi Stan. Was I there? Did we meet? We had a lot of visitors at the warehouse last week. Was I nice? Incredibly good looking? The Napa Nuts folks are great and supply the pumpkin seeds for my Rio Fuego hot sauce.

Glad you got to stop in!

←

No, we missed you. We would like to meet sometime. We'll be stopping in next month.

[snowangel]

Beautiful, restorer~

anybody around to help you eat that?

←

With three hungry roommates, what I have won't last long.

After having another bowl today, I've decided that it could have used another can of hominy, and I probably could have doubled the number of chiles I used. It's quite mild, but all the better to juice it up with some hot sauce.

←

I have made pozole but twice in my life (always using smoked meat and stock), and my family always felt that more was better than less when it came to the posole.

[rancho_gordo]

Beautiful, restorer~

anybody around to help you eat that?

←

With three hungry roommates, what I have won't last long.

After having another bowl today, I've decided that it could have used another can of hominy, and I probably could have doubled the number of chiles I used. It's quite mild, but all the better to juice it up with some hot sauce.

←

I have made pozole but twice in my life (always using smoked meat and stock), and my family always felt that more was better than less when it came to the posole.

←

And leftover hominy can be pureed for grits. Out of this WORLD! Here's my version.

[Jesse A]

For those of us without access to prepared/nixtamalized posole or enough time to do it ourselves, what's the volume conversion from dried to canned hominy? For example, if a recipe calls for 2 cups of prepared dried hominy, how much of the canned stuff would I use?

[rancho_gordo]

For those of us without access to prepared/nixtamalized posole or enough time to do it ourselves, what's the volume conversion from dried to canned hominy?  For example, if a recipe calls for 2 cups of prepared dried hominy, how much of the canned stuff would I use?

←

There are a lot if variables but a pound (which is just over 2 cups) can yield from 6-7 cups of cooked hominy. That's a lot.

If you go to the trouble of making your own, from prepared or from scratch, make a lot and it's ok to freeze. Here's another idea for pureed leftovers.

[Catherine Iino]

Just got back from a couple of weeks in Europe and found this thread. I love pozole! And Rancho Gordo's is great. It's very strange that this is just about the only food I can think of that is almost impossible to come by in the eastern US. I do see the cracked dry stuff around, and I wonder whether the Mexican immigrants in the east tend to come from a particular part of Mexico where the cracked pozole is traditional.

I usually use it to make a pork stew like the recipes given before, but here's a rich pozole side dish; I don't remember where I got the recipe. I'll post in on recipegullet, too.

Squash, Pepper, and Pozole

1/2 lb. dry pozole

3/4 lb winter squash, cut in 1/2" dice

2-3 tbsp oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 tsp dried Greek oregano

salt

1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

2 tbsp ground New Mexico chili

1 tbsp flour*

1 bell pepper, diced

1/2 cup sour cream

chopped cilantro

Rinse pozole and soak overnight. Simmer until tender but not mushy.

In a large skillet, saute onion and squash. Add the oregano and salt and cook over medium flame for about 3 minutes. Add the garlic, stir, and continue cooking for another couple of minutes. Add the ground chili and the flour; stir well. Add the cooked pozole and water to cover. Lower the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Stir in sour cream just before serving, and garnish with cilantro.

*I've left out the flour when preparing this for friends who can't eat wheat and it's fine without it.

[CaliPoutine]

Yesterday I caterered a very large wedding( 250 guests). We have so much pork loin leftover. The loins are stuffed with apples and prunes and are fully cooked. My boss asked me what we could do with the leftovers and I suggested Pozole. Now I'm wondering if we can use this pork.

Can we?

[Abra]

This was very different from any posole I've ever had. First of all, I used Rancho Gordo's red hominy. Doesn't it look like there are beans and tomatoes in that bowl? Nope, that's all the red hominy.

Then, it's posole verde. Here's the recipe. I followed this exactly, except that I put the entire pound of hominy into the sauce. That seems like the right amount, since I wanted more of a stew than a soup. The chicken was just added to the plate, some leftover roasted chicken.

Verdict? I missed the squeak! It might be that I only eat hominy for the squeak, a possibility I'd never before considered. Oh, the shame of admitting it here!

I must say that it was a very good bowl of salsa verde, but the hominy didn't really pick up the flavors of the sauce, even though I let them simmer together for half an hour longer than the recipe called for. It probably needed some crema and sliced radish as a garnish, but I didn't have those. I think a red posole with pork is more my thing.

[Abra]

Just bumping this up to say that lots of rest and extra cooking make a big difference with this dish. I served it last night, after two days in the fridge followed by an additional 5 hours in a clay pot in a 225 oven. Oh yes, that was a lot more like it! By the time it got on the plate the hominy had absorbed virtually all of the sauce and had gotten a great heat and tang to it. I'd certainly make this again, leaving time for a multi-day process.

[kellycolorado]

I love posole. It's in frequent rotation at my place now that I haven't found a nearby restaurant serving it. Mexican, New Mexican, canned posole, frozen posole, pork, beef, chicken, red dried Hatch chiles, Hatch green chiles, I've used them all.

I always garnish with sliced radishes, shredded cabbage, salsa and lime like I learned to have it in California. I'm so excited to find the frozen nixtamalized Hatch brand posole here at one of the stores but I like the texture of the canned too. I often use grassfed chuck since I have that in the freezer and don't have a pastured pork product lying around and my husband prefers the beef. He likes some hot green chile in his too (he likes green chile in everything though LOL). I usually use the simple recipe on the back of my Hatch dried red chile bag that I got at the grocery store.

Next time I make some I'll be sure to post a photo.

Edited February 6, 2007 by kellycolorado (log)

[Emily_R]

Hi all --

Wanted to add my favorite recipe for Chicken Pozole Verde... Would comment about the other posts on this thread, but this is the first time I haven't had technical difficulties posting, so I want to get this up before my good luck changes! Appologies that this recipe is rather rough, but here it is...

The Chicken Part

I start out by poaching 5 or 6 skinless chicken thighs in water to cover, with an onion, a few celery stalks, and some bay leaves added to the water for flavor. After the chicken is cooked, strain the resulting broth and set aside, and shred the chicken off of the bones and set aside.

The Salsa Verde Part

1/3 cup hulled pumpkin seeds, toasted

one small onion, cut into big chunks

one bunch of cilantro, including most of the stems

half a chipotle

a little over a cup of salsa verde -- I use the Goya Salsa Verde that I find in the mexican food aisle. Note that this Salsa Verde is quite spicy, which is why I don't add more chipotles... If you have a milder salsa verde more chipotles would be great.

Puree all of the above together in the blender.

The Putting it All Together Part

In a heavy pot, add some olive oil, then lightly brown a few cloves worth of minced garlic. Add the mix from the blender in, and cook for a few minutes until it starts to brown slightly.

Add to the pot:

The reserved chicken broth (should be maybe 3 cups worth?)

The diced chicken

One large can of hominy, that has been rinsed and drained

about 1 tsp cumin

about 1 Tbs mexican oregano

1 bay leaf

I usually add a little chicken base to up the flavor of the stock

Cook this for maybe 10 minutes more to let the flavors combine. It should be quite thick, but if it is too thick, add a little more chicken broth (or in my case more water and chicken base). At the last minute add juice of half a lime.

Serve with shreddded monterrey jack cheese and more chopped fresh cilantro...

YUM!

Emily

[gestalt768]

Just got back from a couple of weeks in Europe and found this thread. I love pozole! And Rancho Gordo's is great. It's very strange that this is just about the only food I can think of that is almost impossible to come by in the eastern US. I do see the cracked dry stuff around, and I wonder whether the Mexican immigrants in the east tend to come from a particular part of Mexico where the cracked pozole is traditional.

I usually use it to make a pork stew like the recipes given before, but here's a rich pozole side dish; I don't remember where I got the recipe. I'll post in on recipegullet, too.

Squash, Pepper, and Pozole

1/2 lb. dry pozole

3/4 lb winter squash, cut in 1/2" dice

2-3 tbsp oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 tsp dried Greek oregano

salt

1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

2 tbsp ground New Mexico chili

1 tbsp flour*

1 bell pepper, diced

1/2 cup sour cream

chopped cilantro

Rinse pozole and soak overnight. Simmer until tender but not mushy.

In a large skillet, saute onion and squash. Add the oregano and salt and cook over medium flame for about 3 minutes. Add the garlic, stir, and continue cooking for another couple of minutes. Add the ground chili and the flour; stir well. Add the cooked pozole and water to cover. Lower the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Stir in sour cream just before serving, and garnish with cilantro.

*I've left out the flour when preparing this for friends who can't eat wheat and it's fine without it.

←

I love trying new ingredients and bought a package of dry pozole a while back. Then I couldn't seem to find any recipe for it that didn't include meat and since I have a vegetarian house that wasn't helpful. I am looking forward to trying this recipe; it looks very good....thanks

[scubadoo97]

Tried my hand at chicken posole for the first time last week.

After looking at a few recipes I ended up taking a couple of chicken thighs and legs as well as a back and made a stock with carrots, onions, celery, bay leaf and salt and pepper. I also toasted a few pasilla and guajillo peppers then simmered them. I put the peppers in a food processor and ground them up then strained it. The chicken was removed and the stock strained. I added the strained pepper sauce to the stock and added the chicken which I had taken off the bone. More sauteed onions were added as well as spices like cumin, oregano and chili powder that I made with more of the dried peppers. 2 large cans of posole were added as well as a bundle of cilantro. I ended up putting a few cut corn tortillas in the soup to give it a little more body and to bump up the corn taste.

Toppings offered included shredded cabbage, sliced green onions, diced avocado and thin sliced radishes

I really didn't like the waxy texture of the canned posole and will use dried the next time around. That should also give more corn flavor as well.

[Pontormo]

The photograph in the new issue of Gourmet (Sept. 2007) looked so good, I went shopping in a nearby neighborhood this week, armed with information from Rick Bayless as well.

Bayless suggests a third option for the corn used in pozole: nixtamal which is described here (scroll down; there may be better sites than the first one I found).

Since the stores I visited cater to a diverse Latin American population, the emphasis is not on Mexican food per se. However, in the freezer section I found large kernels of "giant corn" from Peru which looked a lot like the dried corn/posole also for sale. In fact, a few of the bags of dried corn were from Peru. (Goya does not specify origin on its bags.)

Is the frozen Peruvian corn the same as nixtamal? I didn't write down information from the packaging, so I don't know to what extent it was processed.

Is there a difference between hominy or posole and the Peruvian dried corn?

I ended up with a can, reluctantly, but just might think about mail orders in the future.

[Catherine Iino]

I just cooked up some darn good pork posole. I had a bag of dried pozole that I had brought back from Colorado last fall, but after I soaked it and cooked it I discovered it was quite rancid. I pulled out a bag of much larger, Peruvian dried hominy--which I got on our egullet Providence food tour last month--and used that. It was delicious. The kernals are about twice as big as the Mexican-style ones I've had, but the taste was pretty much the same, and the soaking/cooking process didn't take any longer.

[markemorse]

Bumping this up because I've made pozole twice in the past couple months with quite different results and thought I would share.

Long story short, the first time was with prepared nixtamal from a grocery store in Phoenix. I used Chris's mother-in-law's recipe linked above, and while the result was edible, it wasn't as good as other pozoles I've had.

After trying it again tonight with Rancho Gordo hominy, I can say that the recipe was not the problem at all, the issue was the texture and flavor of the prepared nixtamal. I cooked the bejesus out it back in November, and it never really did reach a lovable tenderness. Or really taste like much.

Tonight I did a very simple shrimp pozole from a Diana Kennedy recipe with the RG hominy, and it's night and day. As someone mentioned above, the RG hominy is very corny (in a good way), and cooked up to a great texture without any real effort.

Thus, my point: another solid endorsement for RG....

+++

[Chufi]

I made pozole for the first time this week. Not only was it my first time making it, it was also my first time eating it - so I have no clue if it tasted 'right' , all I can say is that it tasted absolutely fantastic, one of the best things I've eaten in a loooong time.

I used Rancho Gordo's hominy, given to me by a friend, and besides that red chiles and chicken. The broth was flavored with a tiny bit of cumin and allspice, and plenty of Mexican oregano.

I made it on Tuesday, we had it for dinner on Wednesday, and I'm very much looking forward to the leftovers tonight. Pictures are here on my blog.

I used about one third of the packet of hominy and I'm so glad I can make this dish 2 more times!!

[blocksnboards]

Being born and raised in New Mexico, posole was eaten at Christmas time in our house. Made with pork and red chile it was always a treat that I looked forward to. Here in Colorado Walmart carries frozen posole.

[Restorer]

I dug up this thread because I made posole rojo last night. Pork neck bones were on special for 0.99/lb at 99 Ranch, so I bought a couple pounds, and a big smoked pork hock. I browned the pork neck, then braised it with the hock for a couple hours in the oven in a broth with some toasted and ground ancho and California chiles (about 5 and 10 of each respectively).

Once the meat was falling apart, I pulled it off the bones and shredded it, then returned it all to the pot, added the hominy, and simmered for a while. I served it with chopped red onion, chopped serrano chiles, sliced radishes, a lemon wedge (had no limes on hand), and fresh corn tortillas.

Tonight I reheated the whole pot and removed all the bones from it, and of course ate more. I have a lot left, which will feed me for another week, even if I try to give some of it away.

[Chris Amirault]

Bump.

I'm trying to find a way to make posole on a weeknight, with the only prep being an overnight soak of the corn. Here's what I've done so far:

1. cooked corn in salted water in the pressure cooker for 30m;

2. meanwhile, browned cubed pork shoulder in lard, then added onion, then garlic, then spices (costeño, guajillo, and ancho chiles, cumin, Mexican oregano), then some tomato purée and the water from a can of diced tomatoes, then a few cups of stock;

3. dumped the whole mess into the pressure cooker, where I'm cooking it for another 10m.

I'll report back. I have no idea what's going to be coming out.

[EatNopales]

Bump.

I'm trying to find a way to make posole on a weeknight, with the only prep being an overnight soak of the corn. Here's what I've done so far:

1. cooked corn in salted water in the pressure cooker for 30m;

2. meanwhile, browned cubed pork shoulder in lard, then added onion, then garlic, then spices (costeño, guajillo, and ancho chiles, cumin, Mexican oregano), then some tomato purée and the water from a can of diced tomatoes, then a few cups of stock;

3. dumped the whole mess into the pressure cooker, where I'm cooking it for another 10m.

I'll report back. I have no idea what's going to be coming out.

What a happy coincidence.... I am on the hook to make Pozole Verde tonight... so far I have soaked Rancho Gordo pozole corn and a chicken stock we made earlier in the day... it is 3:42 right now & we usually have dinner at 5:45... I should probably get on it

[Chris Amirault]

It turned out really well: I think I'll bump up the corn to 40 minutes (one recipe I found said an hour, but that seems too much to me), but the pork was nearly perfect. Very happy about this development!