{ Posole }

Comfort food. New Mexican food. Better than Manna from Heaven but harder to come by.

I made posole last night. This stuff is so good!!!

The night before I wanted to serve posole for dinner, I took out about 2 1/2 lbs of dried hominy and let it soak in water overnight.


To get started on the posole the next day, I seared a 4 lb pork butt in butter. It's not worth it if you don't use real butter, I'm just saying, you only live once. If you're really living, use lard, I just didn't have any on hand at the time. So, I seared the pork butt and then placed it in a very large pot with water, an onion half and a bay leaf. I brought it to a boil and kept it at a rolling simmer for 3 hours, until the meat was cooked. Please keep checking for water and add when needed, no scorching here!


After I got the meat going, I took my soaked, dried hominy, which I got on Amazon. It appears it's currently out of stock, hopefully they'll get it back in or another seller is offering it. Trust me, get good hominy. I once got some dried hominy at the Mexican Food Market in SLC and I innocently trusted it would be great. It was not! I didn't bother to check that it was ok, so I made the posole all the way to the end. We all sat down to eat and the hominy all had crunchy, hard, inedible shells still attached that had to be picked out. You do not want this!!

So, back to the hominy. I drained it and then put it in a pot with fresh water, brought to a boil and added about 1 TBS of salt. Kept at a rolling simmer for 2 hours. Again, check for water and add as needed!

Meanwhile, I prepared my chile. I got 4 oz of dried red chile pods, which I destemmed and deseeded. Place them in one layer on a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven broiler for about 5 minutes. Toast the chiles under the broiler for about 30 seconds. Do not walk away during this operation, scorched chile is gross. I usually set my timer for 5 minutes and then start smelling for chile smells after about 20 seconds. You do not want to go much past that! After toasting them, I placed the chiles into my Blentec with really hot water out of the tap and soaked for 20-30 minutes. Now they were ready to blend to a sauce. Most recipes call for a paste, but I don't really care about a little added water which the posole usually needs anyway.

After the pork was cooked, I removed it from the pot and cubed it. If you're an overachiever, go ahead and shred it. Do not dump out any of that good broth in the pot!! Don't!! But do remove the bay leaf and the onion. I drained the hominy and added it to the pork broth along with the shredded pork. Then I added the chile sauce. Now add the remainder of the ingredients:

1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, into the garlic press
1 TBS Mexican oregano
1 TBS salt, or to taste
pepper to taste

I then simmered until the onion was cooked, served it up and really enjoyed!

I did have a question about whether to add cumin. I'm pretty sure my MIL does not, but I had it written down from a recipe on a package of hominy I bought in New Mexico. Since I really wasn't sure, I took to Facebook and asked the question. I got mostly no's (noes, nose - how do you make no plural!?!) on that one, and I got about 400 comments on the subject. I think it's up to your tastebuds and what you like, but if you do add it, use it very sparingly. I did not end up adding it because I tasted the posole and it was wonderful and I never mess with a good thing!