Pozole rojo

Ingredients

• Pork shoulder1.2 kg
• Hominy — tinned800 g
• Guajillo chillies6
• Ancho chillies3
• Onion1
• Garlic6 clove
• Mexican oregano1 tbsp
• Bay leaves2
• Radish, cabbage, lime, onionto taste
• Tostadasto taste
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cover the pork with water, add half the onion, three cloves of garlic and the bay, and simmer two hours, skimming.

   125 min

2. 2

   Seed the chillies, toast them in a dry pan twenty seconds a side and cover them with boiling water for twenty minutes.

   22 min

3. 3

   Blend the chillies with the remaining onion, garlic and a cup of the broth, and pass the result through a sieve without fail.

   8 min

4. 4

   Fry the strained sauce in a spoon of fat for five minutes: it darkens and thickens. Pour it into the pot with the meat.

   7 min

5. 5

   Add the rinsed hominy and the oregano and cook another forty minutes. Pull the meat into shreds and return it.

   45 min

6. 6

   Serve with bowls of sliced radish, cabbage, onion, lime wedges, oregano and tostadas. Everyone builds their own bowl.

About the dish

The corn for pozole is not ordinary corn: the kernels are treated with alkali, which makes them bloom open and gives them their particular flavour. Ordinary sweetcorn does not stand in; that would be a different dish.

Guajillo and ancho chillies are soaked, blended and — without fail — strained. An unstrained sauce leaves shreds of skin in the soup that never soften.

Half the dish is what goes on the table: radish, cabbage, oregano, lime, onion, chilli. The soup is designed as a base each person finishes themselves.

Worth knowing

• — Toast the dried chillies for exactly twenty seconds. Overdone, they leave a bitterness that runs through the whole pot.
• — Straining the sauce is not an optional step. Chilli skin never softens and ruins the texture.
• — Pozole is better the next day. Cut the garnishes fresh before serving; prepared ahead they lose their crunch.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

560 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

44 g

More from Mexico

• Guacamole — Avocado, lime, onion and chilli crushed with a fork. No blender and no sour cream: both turn it into a dip rather than guacamole.
• Tacos al pastor — Pork in a marinade of dried chillies and pineapple, seared to caramelised edges, in a corn tortilla.
• Chiles rellenos — Poblano peppers stuffed with cheese in an airy egg batter, fried and served under tomato sauce.