Destination
Puerto Vallarta
The story
Pozole is Mexico's most celebrated soup and one of the country's oldest continuously-eaten dishes: a big-hominy stew of pork (traditionally the whole head), simmered for hours in a broth that's either red (rojo, with dried chiles), white (blanco, plain) or green (verde, with tomatillos and pumpkin seed), and served in a wide bowl with a mountain of raw garnishes on the side — shredded lettuce or cabbage, sliced radishes, thin-sliced onion, chopped oregano, dried chile powder, lime wedges, tostadas and avocado. Every diner customises their own bowl, adding a handful of this and a squeeze of that until the soup transforms from a plain stew into a colourful, textural, personal creation.
Method
Combine pork, ribs, halved onion, garlic head, bay, oregano, peppercorns, salt and water in a large heavy pot. Bring to a simmer, skim foam, and cook uncovered 2 hours 30 minutes until the pork is fork-tender. Lift the pork out and reserve. Strain the broth back into the pot; discard aromatics.
Toast guajillos and anchos on a dry pan 20 seconds a side. Soak in hot water 15 minutes.
Char the garlic and half onion on a dry pan 6 minutes. Toast cumin and oregano 30 seconds. Drain the chiles. Blend chiles, charred vegetables, toasted spices, salt and 300ml of the pork broth to a smooth paste. Strain through a sieve.
Warm the lard in a small pan. Tip in the strained chile paste (careful — it splutters). Cook 10 minutes, stirring, until darkened and the fat separates.
Whisk the cooked chile base into the pork broth in the big pot. Return the pork chunks to the pot. Add the drained hominy. Simmer gently 30 minutes to marry everything. Taste and adjust salt.
Arrange all the raw garnishes in separate bowls on a large tray or platter. Each guest gets their own supply.
Ladle the hot pozole into wide deep bowls, making sure each has plenty of pork, hominy and broth. Bring to the table with the garnish tray. Each eater builds their own bowl: adds shredded lettuce, radish, onion, oregano, chile powder, a squeeze of lime, and eats with a spoon plus a tostada on the side.
Pozole is markedly better on day two, when the flavours have integrated. It holds in the fridge 4 days and freezes well. Reheat gently.
Tips
- The garnishes are not garnishes. They're half the dish. Do not skimp on the platter of raw vegetables, lime, oregano and chile powder. A plain bowl of pozole is not pozole.
- Simmer, don't boil. Both the pork and the finished pozole should simmer gently, never boil hard. Hard boiling toughens the pork and cloudies the broth.
- Canned hominy is fine. Dried nixtamalised hominy takes 4 hours to cook and requires soaking overnight. Canned (Juanita's or Bush's brands) gets you 90% of the way for a fraction of the time.
- September 16 is pozole day. In Mexico, Independence Day is the country's pozole occasion. If you make it for that day, you're following a national tradition.
- Ancho powder is the finish. A generous dusting of ancho or piquín powder across the top of each bowl at the table is what colour-corrects it from plain stew into festive pozole. Do not skip.
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