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New Mexican Pozole
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- Total Time
- 3 to 4 hours
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- 1½pounds dried hominy (posole), available in Latino groceries, soaked overnight in cold water
- 3ounces dried red New Mexico chiles (about 10 large chiles)
- 2pounds fresh pork belly, cut in 2-inch cubes
- 2pounds pork shoulder, not too lean, cut in 2-inch chunks
- Salt and pepper
- 1large yellow onion, peeled, halved and stuck with 2 cloves
- 1bay leaf
- 1tablespoon chopped garlic
- 2teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted until fragrant and coarsely ground
- 2cups finely diced white onion, soaked in ice water, for garnish
- Lime wedges
- Roughly chopped cilantro, for garnish
- Toasted Mexican oregano, for garnish
Preparation
- Step 1
Drain soaked hominy and put in large soup pot. Cover with water and bring to boil. Let simmer briskly for 1 hour.
- Step 2
While hominy is cooking, make red chile purée: Toast dried chiles lightly in cast-iron skillet or stovetop grill, just until fragrant. Wearing gloves, slit chiles lengthwise with paring knife. Remove and discard stems and seeds. Put chiles in saucepan and cover with 4 cups water. Simmer 30 minutes and let cool. In blender, purée chiles to a smooth paste using some cooking water as necessary. Purée should be of milkshake consistency.
- Step 3
Season pork belly and pork shoulder generously with salt and pepper. After posole has cooked 1 hour, add pork shoulder, pork belly, onion stuck with cloves, bay leaf, garlic and cumin. Add enough water to cover by 2 inches, then return to a brisk simmer. While adding water occasionally and tasting broth for salt, simmer for about 2½ hours more, until meat is tender and posole grains have softened and burst. Skim fat from surface of broth.
- Step 4
Stir in 1 cup chile purée and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste and correct seasoning. (At this point, posole can be cooled completely and reheated later. Refrigerate for up to 3 days.)
- Step 5
To serve, ladle posole, meat and broth into wide bowls. Pass bowls of diced onion, lime wedges, cilantro and oregano, and let guests garnish to taste.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
I prefer to skip the pork belly and trim up the shoulder, then boil it for 15 min or so in the least amount of water to cover. Even high quality pork shoulder will throw off impurities. Skim off this grey foam, strain and rinse. It will also melt off some of the excess fat. Then return meat to pot. I use a combo of water and chicken stock. Delicious with green chili (anaheims) and tomatillo too. Just roast them both and proceed with recipe, minus the red chili and cumin.
We had this on Christmas Eve. The pork was browned first, and it was delicious. I generally brown meat first before adding to a stew or soup.
I've been making posole for a long time. I use my slow cooker. I use pork shoulder as well, but green chiles, as the posole I've had in NM has been the green chile variety. It's fantastic in the winter with black beans and rice.
Traditional posole would use pig's feet. It adds a nice, gelatinous feel to the broth. I also rinse and drain the posole once or twice during pre-cooking to eliminate some of the starchiness. Cook corn until at your desired tenderness before adding other ingredients. Once meat and broth are added the posole tends not to get any softer in my experience.
I'm a New Mexican and we serve posole with just a little red chile in it for a bit of color. No pork belly.
It's then served to guests with sides of diced onion, cilantro, red chile sauce, Mexican oregano crushed and sprinkled on top, chopped green chile, corn and flour tortillas, queso fresca, crema, just about anything you might like. Each person "dresses"the posole with what they like. Oh, side of pinto beans Traditionally served around Christmas when folks come visiting.
My sons grew up with Posole as their Christmas Eve tradition. The main reason we did New Mexican food was that I grew up eating Lutefisk for Christmas Eve and I think Lutefisk is child abuse. ;)
I brown my pork shoulder in lard before making red chile and green chile. I put the hominy with some of it's broth together with fresh cilantro, lime juice and salt.
Ladle the hominy mixture into bowls and ladle whichever chile you want in on top of it. Serve it with fresh, home-made tortillas.
I live in Taos NM. This would be extremely meaty by local standards.
One common misconception is that NNM (Northern New Mexican) cuisine is super hot or spicy. It is absolutely not. The most prized chiles here are from Chimayo and are said to come from seeds brought by the Spaniards hundreds of years ago. They are all about the deep sweet citrusy flavor, not the heat which is probably around 3-5,000 scovilles.
Greetings from New Mexico.
This is a wonderful recipe, and if you have never eaten posole, you don't know what you're missing. I'm wondering whether you can get frozen hominy in NYC, or wherever you might be. I think It makes the best posole,
I really respect David Tanis's knowledge of New Mexico cooking, but this recipe disappointed me. I used nixtamal, after soaking as indicated in the recipe, and made the recipe exactly as written. For my taste, it was much too fatty, even after cooling and removal of all the fat on the surface, and I would use only pork shoulder rather than pork belly and pork shoulder. And it wasn't nearly hot enough. I ended up dosing with added chipotle con adobe and then Srichacha.
I’m a NM native, grew up in Albuquerque, lived in Espanola for a while. In my nearly 50 years here, I’ve NEVER seen cabbage/radishes garnishing posole. Maybe they do so in in southern NM? The cuisine of the Rio Abajo (lower Rio Grande) is sometimes more Mexico-influenced than in the Rio Arriba (upper Rio Grande). In my experience, posole is served piping hot with tortillas, beans, and - if your comadre *really* loves you - with fresh tamales and biscochitos for dessert. Mmm - Christmas Eve!
If you're using Anaheims it's no longer New Mexican. And, BTW, I'm not aware of anyone here who spells posole with a "z." And it's not that way in the ingredients list so why is ther a z in the title?
MMcKaibab...it is a-ok if it's not "New Mexican".... it is a traditional dish throughout many states in MEXICO. And there you will find innumerable variations using varied chiles/proteins. And as culture is a living thing, it continues to evolve. So, I have had some truly epic seafood poZole in Mexico. As for the spelling... both are widely used and while in mamy parts of US the "s" spelling is common, I have seen "z" spelling used all over..... ;-)
For authenticity be sure to have shredded cabbage and radishes in your garnish assortment.
I'd suggest putting the pureed chiles through a strainer to get out the chunkier bits. It's how we make pozole at home.
In my extended New Mexican family it was never cooked with red chili but always green. You serve it with red chili on the side for those who wish to add it, I always did. It's Christmas after all.
I prefer pork shoulder only. The method is to 1. make a broth with the cooked pork and chill it to skim off the fat. 2. Soften chiles in warm water then blend. 3.Add chile mix and hominy to broth then add pork. 4. I always serve pozole with raw white onion, cubed avocado, Indio oregano and lime juice. It makes it brighter and better year round.
I went to my local Mexican grocery store and he had me buy "cal" calcium hydroxide. I don't know exactly what it does but apparently it's a necessary ingredient for the posole to get the right texture. I made a vegan version of this which turned out AMAZING. Added pinto beans to make a full protein.
We were in northern NM this past summer and fell in love all over again with posole. I also grow Chimayo chiles in my garden, so i was excited to make a pilgrimage to Chimayó, home of my chiles, as well as of a lovely early 19th c. adobe Mission. I bought local nixtamalized blue corn there to combine with my beloved Chimayos for posole. I'm also nixing the pork belly, cumin (too TexMex) & cloves, adding chicken broth & browning the pork first.
The New Mexico Chile gives a really mild comforting flavor. Can add head as desired with hot sauce.
Making posole should not take 3-4 hours. I make a green chile pork posole in my instant pot. Start to finish it takes me an hour and 15 minutes.
I made this with a few changes. 1. Used only pork shoulder to make it less greasy. Browned it in 1T lard 2. Cooked pork in homemade pork stock (3 pigs feet, mirepoix, etc) The stock sets like jello overnight and can be de-fatted. 3. Used fresh hominy which I found refrigerated in my local Hispanic market (1lb/lb of meat). It needs to be slowly simmered in water for about an hour, then added during the last 45 minutes to the soup 4. Added Mexican oregano to-the soup (I used 1 tablespoon)
A good stew. The recipe made about 3 cups of the chile sauce. What am I supposed to do with the 2 cups not put in the stew?
great recipe...thanks! I used Las Palmas red chile sauce as a shortcut today, new mexico chile seco next time
This is a great foundational recipe around which I've made a number of variations. Always good. Some variations that have worked: 1) Lamb not pork. My wife doesn't eat pork since the movie Babe the Pig. When using lamb: I brown the chunks first in some savory oil (coconut or ghee). Add and soften onion. Add garlic. With lamb I triple the garlic compared to a pork recipe. Lamb likes garlic. 2) Tonight I blended in a few chipotle in adobo into the red chiles. Yum!
Ok, I'm from NM. I learned how to make Posole when I was young from my Gammi....my godmother's mother. Yes, hispanic and a Native to NM. We use Pork Tenderloin, brown it, add the spices of oregano, 1 cut up onion, cumin, garlic, salt while browning it. Throw that into the crock pot. Add 1 bag of dried or frozen hominy. Get about 12 RED HATCH chile pods, cut in half, clear out seeds. Blend well with HOT water. Throw that in. Leave to cook overnight. Add lime & salt if needed & eat with tortilla.
I use 1/3 white posole, 1/3 yellow posole, and 1/3 pinto beans for the base, and combine chicken thigh meat with the pork shoulder, about half and half. I skip pork belly, but do add a liter of fat-free chicken broth. I chop the yellow onion and don't use cloves. For garnish I offer sliced radishes, shredded Dutch green cabbage, chopped green onions in place of white, thinly sliced jalapenos, cilantro and lime wedges. Mix leftover garnish and top w/ ranch dressing for a delish southwest slaw.
I used 1/2 pound of pork belly and browned the meat and the onions first. I also added a chipotle pepper for flavor.
From a native New Mexican... leave the cumin out. Cumin is for Tex mex. Forget the cloves, as well. Pork belly is too fatty, you'll be skimming fat for hours. New Mexicans use lean pork plus a couple of pigs feet. New Mexican posole is a very simple dish... 1 big diced onion, 4 or 5 minced garlic cloves, 1-2 cups of hot NM red chile powder, 4lbs lean cubed pork, 2 pigs feet, chicken broth and water. Simmer till the meat is tender, then add cooked posole corn. 6lb can of hominy works just fine.
Also a New Mexican, I endorse Joshua's version.
I enjoyed this recipe, we used Guajillo chiles from the store, canned white hominy, and a 3 lb pork shoulder for the main parts. I am a huge fan of birria de res, so I incorporated some of that style in my Chile: in the blender I added the rehydrated guajillos, a handful of garlic cloves, a half an onion (for me a left over red cuz I hate wasting :)), then a tsp each of cumin and oregano, with some water from the chiles to blend. I used Omaha steak seasoning on the pork- better than expected!
50 mins in pressure cooker
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