Pozole
Pozole
A feast soup of nixtamal corn and pork — red, white or green — that you finish at the table with radish, cabbage and lime.
Recipe by I Want Some Food · Reviewed by the editorial kitchen. Native name preserved: Pozole.
0 people cooked this in the public kitchen yet. Kitchen-tested by I Want Some Food. Not a purchased rating.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 2 hr
- Rest
- None
- Total
- 2 hr 25 min
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Spice
- Medium heat
- Cost
- A bit special$16–28 USD · indicative, not a store price
About
Pozole is hominy and pork (or chicken) in a long broth, then a blender of toasted chilli if you want it rojo. The diner adds shredded cabbage, radish, onion, oregano and lime. It is a celebration pot that also freezes. Canned hominy is how most apartments do it. Rinse tinned maize kernels until the liquid runs clearer or the broth tastes of the tin. A cloudy pot is not a failure, but a metallic one is. Skim early if you used a fatty cut. Toast dried chillies until fragrant, not black, or the blender sauce turns bitter. Add the garnishes at the table in handfuls; stirring cabbage into a boiling vat makes school-canteen soup. Salt in layers. If you cook it a day ahead, the fat sets and you can lift some off, which is a kindness, not a loss of soul.
Ingredients
- Pork, shoulder or neck, in chunks1 kg
- Hominy, canned, drained, or cooked dried800 g
- Fresh chilli, dried guajillo or ancho, stemmed4
- Garlic6 clove
- Oregano4.9 ml
- Cabbage, shredded, to serve200 g
- Korean radish, sliced radish, to serve100 g
- Lime3
- Water2½ l
- Salt9.9 ml
Scaling multiplies the written quantities. Baking still prefers a scale.
Steps
Step 1
Simmer pork, half the onion and half the garlic in water 90 minutes until the meat pulls. Skim.
90 minStep 2
Toast chillies, soak, blend with remaining garlic and a ladle of broth. Strain into the pot with hominy. Simmer 20 minutes. Salt, oregano.
30 minStep 3
Shred the pork back in. Serve with cabbage, radish, onion, lime. The table finishes the bowl.
Adapt this recipe
The canonical recipe stays intact. Personal versions are labelled. Serving changes are maths, not AI.
Adaptations · 0 / 15 used. Resets 10 October.
Substitutions
Dried chilli → A milder paprika plus one chilli
Less depth. Still a hominy soup.
Tips
- Pozole blanco skips the red blender. Same pot, cleaner.
- Chicken is a lighter Saturday.
History & culture
Saturdays, Independence, family gatherings. Jalisco, Guerrero and Michoacán all claim a style. A weekend pozole is a house filling with steam and the sound of limes being cut. It is social food: a pot, a table of raw crunch, people building their own bowls. Regional colour — red, green, white — is identity, not a heat scale. Taking it as a hangover cure is real enough. Taking it as a novelty chilli is how you miss the corn. The hominy should taste of nixtamal, which is to say of cooked maize, not of chicken stock cube.
Nixtamal corn soup is pre-Hispanic. The modern pork pozole is colonial and after. Nixtamalisation is the deep technology here; meat on top of it shifted with colonisation, ranching, and later refrigeration. Celebration pots and market stalls kept the dish public. Tinned maize is how apartment cooks stay in the tradition without a barrel of lime. Purists can nixtamalise. Most of the country also opens a tin. Both are part of the modern record, even if only one looks romantic in a documentary.
Traditional
Provenance: Editorial adaptation.
Questions about this recipe
Answers taken from this dish's times, amounts, swaps and tips — not a chatbot.
How long does Pozole take?
2 hr 25 min all in — 25 min prep, 2 hr cook. Cook and rest follow the method. Leftover storage and optional extra waits are not included.
How many does it serve?
The recipe is written for 6 bowls. Scale the ingredient list on the page if you are cooking for a different number.
How hard is it?
Medium.
How spicy is it?
Medium heat.
Does it fit a diet?
The published recipe is labelled Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Nut-free.
What does it cost to cook?
A bit special — about $16–28 USD, as a grocery budget for this recipe, not a restaurant price.
What equipment do I need?
Stockpot, Blender.
How much salt do I put in?
The recipe lists Salt at 2 tsp.
What can I use instead?
Dried chilli → A milder paprika plus one chilli. Less depth. Still a hominy soup.
Any tips from this recipe?
Pozole blanco skips the red blender. Same pot, cleaner. Chicken is a lighter Saturday.
Can I use an air fryer?
This method is not written for an air fryer. The core technique on the page still applies.
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