Pork Al Pastor
Bring bold Mexican flavors into your home using my pork al pastor recipe. It’s made with blackened pineapples and marinated pork that’s grilled until it’s fall-apart tender. Need more inspiration for taco night? Try my chicken t…
all things food
Bring bold Mexican flavors into your home using my pork al pastor recipe. It’s made with blackened pineapples and marinated pork that’s grilled until it’s fall-apart tender. Need more inspiration for taco night? Try my chicken t…
There is so much to love about this Swedish meatballs recipe! Tender and juicy balls of pork and beef are simmered in a flavorful creamy gravy and served over rice, noodles, or mashed potatoes!
My stuffed pork loin makes the most impressive main dish at dinner parties, holidays, or when I want to throw a special dinner for my family. It’s easy to prep and cooks in under 30 minutes. Try my stuffed salmon, stuffed pork chops, stuffed chic…
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My smoked pork loin recipe yields the juiciest and most flavorful pork you’ll ever eat. It’s SO easy to make and perfect for the holiday season! Keen on more smoker recipes? Try smoked corned beef, smoked beef tenderloin, smoked turkey wing…
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Sausage balls are a crowd-pleasing appetizer that’s both savory and satisfying. With a blend of sausage, cheese, and biscuit mix, they’re perfect for any gathering or as a tasty snack.
If you’re looking for an easy way to enjoy cabbage rolls, try this stuffed cabbage soup! Stove-top, slow cooker and Instant Pot instructions included. Who loves cabbage rolls? Although I’ve never actually made stuffed cabbage rolls, I remember ha…
If you’re looking for an easy way to enjoy cabbage rolls, try this stuffed cabbage soup! Stove-top, slow cooker and Instant Pot instructions included. Who loves cabbage rolls? Although I’ve never actually made stuffed cabbage rolls, I remember having them during my teen years at a friend’s house. They are similar to stuffed peppers, which…
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This Brunswick stew has remained a Southern classic for a reason. Savory, meaty, comforting, with a hint of sweet tanginess this is the perfect one pot meal!
Pozole has always been one of my favorite soups. It’s a Mexican soup made with tender pork, hominy, and a rich red chili broth. When I can tear myself away from tacos long enough, it’s my go-to order at an authentic Mexican restaurant. I’ve NEVER been able to replicate this soup at home; it’s always…
Pozole has always been one of my favorite soups. It’s a Mexican soup made with tender pork, hominy, and a rich red chili broth. When I can tear myself away from tacos long enough, it’s my go-to order at an authentic Mexican restaurant. I’ve NEVER been able to replicate this soup at home; it’s always missing some major umph. My sister Laura, who lives deep in the heart of Texas, did a ton of research, consulted Mexican friends and old family recipes, and has come up with a super authentic and truly extraordinary pozole, perfect for Christmas or a special occasion!
Last week, I went to pick Charlotte and Truman up from their mountain biking class that I signed them up for a couple weeks ago. My kids are not experienced bikers. This is pretty out of our comfort zone, mine included (have YOU ever strapped heavy bikes onto a bike rack and driven on the freeway?? terrifying) but now they go out twice a week on the trail, and they are learning a ton!
At pick up, Truman’s coach makes a beeline for me and says, with a serious look on his face, “Ma’am, are you Truman’s mom?” Yes, I said. “Well, today, he fell off—”
Truman comes racing up, huge smile on his face, bounding around like a puppy, tail practically wagging— “Mom, I fell off a BRIDGE!”
😳 I’m sorry, WHAT now???
The coach follows up (as somber as possible), yes he did indeed fall off a bridge, but it was like, a tiny bridge, and it was a slow fall, and the brambles really helped buffer it all, and he actually did a great job falling the right way (??) and oh yeah you’re going to need a new bike because the handlebars are permanently bent out of shape now.
I was in a bit of a daze but I couldn’t see any signs of a concussion, and Truman certainly didn’t seem upset. Quite the opposite actually, so we went on our merry way. gaahhhh!!
I am getting exactly what I wanted, though, honestly. I’m obsessed with the Anxious Generation book that you’ve hopefully heard about by now, by Jonathon Haidt, all about how the rising generation is overly anxious, because they lack experience. (Instead they are on screens all day.)
Experiences like mountain biking — a little thrill, a little danger, outside in nature, with people — is exactly what they need. Especially during puberty when their brains are so plastic, and are rewiring for adulthood. (Remember “demo day” on Inside Out 2? 🤣) Highly recommend this book! Soon YOU TOO can have your children falling off of bridges in the name of experience!
Okay, now we get to talk about THEE most amazing soup of all time. Seriously, this soup is now up there with the greats for our family, the greats including the likes of Beef Barley Soup and Creamy Turkey Wild Rice Soup. My 7-year-old ate nothing else for meals until this Pozole was gone.
Pozole is a simple soup, at it’s heart, but it’s just so different than the soups I’m used to (thanks mostly to the hominy, more on that later.)
It’s a brothy soup with slow-cooked super-tender pork, said hominy, and a rich red chili sauce mixed in to make it slightly creamy. The toppings are where a lot of the interest is for this soup, fresh and crunchy cabbage, a squeeze of lime, razor-thin radish slices, a dollop of cream. It’s got incredible flavor from the dried chilies we are adding. You are not used to flavor like this. It’s so different and so good.
It’s a labor of love, for sure. This is a special occasion soup, Mexicans often make it at Christmas time, kind of like how Americans only make turkey once a year. That’s why Laura didn’t try to make this a “cheater” recipe or take any shortcuts. It’s meant to be slowly, lovingly simmered, and hopefully made when family is around, so you can share the labor of deseeding the dried chilies, or slicing the veggies for the toppings.
There are SO many regional variations of pozole, but the basis for every pozole is hominy.
Hominy is made by drying out corn (maize), then cooking the dried kernels in an alkaline solution (usually water and lime) til soft. It’s the same process they use to make delicious, lime-y corn tortillas, I talked about this on my recent Cornbread Layer Cake post (because we use masa harina in that cake, bringing in that flavor.) If you’re a food nerd like me, definitely read this article about the nixtamalization process. So cool!
Since you may never have tried this soup, I’m going to break it down for you…this soup is 100% worth the time and effort.
To make this soup Pozole Rojo (RED), a blended dried red chile sauce is added to the broth, and to make it Pozole Verde (GREEN) a fresh, green blended chile sauce is added. Today’s soup is red, it’s a little more common.
Pozole has really deep roots going all the way back to Pre-Hispanic Mexico. A version of this soup has been made since the time of the Aztecs, isn’t that so cool?! So much tradition. Most historians say this was initially a special soup made at times of rituals and important events. And it still is! Many Mexicans and Mexican Americans make Pozole for certain festivals or holidays like Christmas, New Years, and Mexican Independence Day.
This list looks long, but I’ve broken it down for you so you can see all the parts. The soup itself is basically just a flavorful broth with some pork and hominy. This recipe is ALL about the toppings, just like my Chicken Enchilada Soup. This soup looks a little intimidating, but I promise it’s not hard. Just needs a lil TLC.
Okay, don’t freak out, but I’m going to show you a lot of pictures of raw meat 😂 The reason I include process photos on my blog posts is to make the “hard” stuff seem more doable. We have to get ourselves some chopped pork butt, and some pork bones, separate from each other.
The simplest solution is to buy a 3-4 pound bone-in pork butt. IF YOU CAN, haul it right over to the butcher at the store and ask them to debone it for you and chop the meat into 2-inch chunks. But if you can’t find a butcher to do it, it’s really not that hard. And I want to emphasize, it’s doesn’t have to be perfect. We are not cutting up uniform steaks; it’s all being thrown into a soup.
Here we go:
Here’s the bone that we need to get out.
Place the knife on top of this flat side of the bone, and cut all the way through to release this top flap of meat.
Now move to this curvy part. Use a smaller knife for this part, my chef’s knife was cumbersomely wide.
Maneuver the meat around however it’s comfortable. It’s coming along:
Once you have the bone completely out, cut off any large caps of fat.
Cut the meat into 2 inch cubes.
And save that bone, of course. Now it’s time to get cooking!
Sear the pieces of pork with lots of space in between, so they can brown instead of steaming each other.
Sear the bone, too, if there is a lot of meat on it. When you’re done, add all the meat and bone back into the pot.
Add in the onion, garlic, bay leaves, chicken bouillon base, cumin. Then add 10 cups of water too, and bring to a boil.
As the pork broth boils, these protein bits (called scum, ew) will float to the top. Every 30 minutes or so as the soup simmers, come back and remove as much of this as you can. I like to line a bowl with heavy foil and scoop it into that (then I chill it and discard it later).
Pozole is meant to have a “clear broth,” meaning it’s just liquid, no floating onions or scum or anything. It’s an annoying process to strain a hot soup, so I like to use this spooning-off-the-top method to remove as much as I can, then call it good. If you had a particularly fatty cut of pork, it can release an unappetizing amount of scum, so follow the instructions in the notes for straining the broth if you want.
While the broth simmers, you’ve got lots of time to make the chili sauce. This is the fun part!
Use a knife to chop the dried chile in half, and remove all the seeds with your hands. These black ones are ancho chilies. They are not the MOST traditional chile to use in pozole, but I’m obsessed with the flavor.
This red one is a guajillo, a classic chile used in pozole. I’m showing here how I pulled an inner vein out of the chile, we don’t need that.
Place all the chile flesh in a pan with some oil and toast it a bit:
Add in the onion and garlic. Then cover with water and simmer 20 minutes, until the water is reduced.
Pour the whole thing into a blender and puree it up.
Use a strainer to add it back into the pan on the stove. Then cook the chili sauce on the stove for another 10 minutes or so, so it gets nice and toasty.
Once your broth is as clear as you want it (see recipe notes for straining instructions if the scum is killing you), add the chili sauce to the soup, and a little cap of vinegar too, for the perfect acidic bite. And next up is the hominy, look at these gorgeous corny guys:
After the hominy has been added, the soup cooks for another hour or two, until the pork is fall-apart tender, the hominy is tender-but-not-mushy, and your kitchen smells like heaven.
Don’t forget to add in all the veggie toppings! They totally MAKE this soup!!
The toppings for pozole are just as important as the soup! Similar to Ramen, the toppings are half of the experience. I recommend trying all the toppings at least once, they take the soup from delicious to OMG. Pick and choose or add to this list to make it your own. Laura’s friend Karla from Aguas Calientes in Mexico (Hi Karla!), who helped her with so much advice for this recipe, confided that she always eats hers with “lechuguita” (shredded iceberg lettuce) because she doesn’t like the taste of the more traditional cabbage!!
Pozole rojo is a very common soup in Mexico, and so many people have their own versions of it. Think of it kind of like a chicken noodle soup here in the states. The basics are the same, but there are about as many versions of the soup as there are people making it. Pozole is like that!
Don’t be afraid to play around with it and find the version you like best! You can totally change up which dried chiles you use, the amount of meat, broth, or hominy you like, and how spicy you like it. Here are some general tips that can help you in your search for your best pozole!
Pozole stores very well in the refrigerator for up to a week. It must be stored separately from its toppings, of course. Wait for the soup to cool, then add it to a container with an airtight lid. It will do best in glass containers since the broth is quite red from the chiles, and the fat in the broth will stick to the side of whatever you put it in. If you do use plastic to store the soup, don’t reheat the container of soup in the microwave, it will for sure stain it. Instead, transfer the soup to a bowl. Once the plastic container is completely empty, use paper towels to wipe off all the red fatty residue until it looks clear again, then wash like normal.
To reheat a large amount of soup, transfer it to a pot and warm over a burner set to medium until it’s heated to your liking. I like to reheat individual bowls in the microwave for 2-3 minutes. Use a microwave cover so it doesn’t splatter, and stir every minute. Take out any leftover toppings, or prepare more, and serve!
Pozole freezes beautifully! Which is nice considering it makes a very large pot of soup. And unless you have a very large family, you WILL have a lot of leftovers. Once you’ve finished your meal, wait for the pozole to completely cool, then carefully ladle it into a ziplock freezer bag. Try to get as much air out of the bag as possible, and seal. You can put it straight into the freezer, where it will be good for about 3-4 months. The toppings that go with pozole (cabbage, radishes, lime, cilantro, onion) should not be frozen. The quality will not be the same, it’s definitely best to prepare those fresh when you serve again.
To use frozen pozole, put the bag in a bowl and leave it to thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Add it in a large pot on the stove over medium heat. Or, add the completely frozen block of soup into a slow cooker, put it on low, and let it heat over several hours. It should take about 15-20 minutes to heat on the stove, and 3-4 hours on high or 4-6 hours on low in the crockpot. While the pozole warms, prepare your toppings. Once the soup is hot, ladle it into bowls and serve with fresh toppings!
Nothing but the spelling! Pozole is the correct, or at least more common, spelling of the word in Spanish and what you will see for the most part in Mexico. Posole is just a variation of the original spelling. It’s not as common, and tends to be more frequent in the U.S. than in Mexico.
The soup is made by boiling harder cuts of pork and flavorings (like onion and garlic) for a long time in water to make a broth and tender bites of cooked pork. Once that part is finished, canned hominy (a corn product that removes the hull and germ and then is boiled), is added to the broth and cooked until tender. With no extra sauce, the soup is called a Pozole Blanco, or White Pozole. The more common versions add either a red blended chile sauce to make Pozole Rojo (Red), or a blended sauce of green chiles and tomatillos to make it Pozole Verde (Green).
Heck yes it’s healthy! A brothy soup with some meat, corn, and a bunch of veggies as toppings? For sure. Obviously, everyone has their own opinion when it comes to what “healthy” means. If you decide to chow down 17 tostadas with your bowl of soup, then, you know. Maybe not so healthy. But I’m not here to judge your pozole process, ok, you do you.
It’s tradition! Pozole predates the country of Mexico, going all the way back to the Aztecs. It’s been around for several centuries. Originally it was served to only the elite for special occasions. Over time, as access to meat grew, more and more people were able to make it and take part in the special dish. While it can be a normal weekday meal, it is still often served at special occasions even now, like on Christmas, New Year’s Day, birthdays, and more!
Mexican food is probably my all-time favorite food category. There is just SO much goodness to choose from! (as Jim knows 🤣) Here are some of my favorite recipes that I’ve gotten posted on the blog, there’s so much more to go!
I am always down for a hearty soup on a chilly day. They fill you up, warm your bones, and generally tend to be good for you (not just for the soul). Here are some of my favorites!
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