Rachael Ray - Dish Come True Posole Recipe

DREAM TEAM
Writer Chloe Osborne (left) and her friend Sally Helweg drink to a job well done.

Personalize your pozole with any or all of the toppings.

Dried hominy works, but canned is faster and easier.

Posole
6 Servings
PREP TIME: 30 min
COOK TIME: 2 hr
This dish is even better when served the next day.
2 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano, plus more for garnish
1 to 2 tablespoons canned chipotle chiles in adobo
sauce puréed with 4 tablespoons water
Two 30-ounce cans hominy
1 bay leaf
2 medium onions, 1 finely chopped, 1 diced
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch of cilantro, stemmed, plus 2 tablespoons chopped
6 radishes, thinly sliced
1 large or 2 small ripe Hass avocados, diced
2 limes, cut into wedges
Corn tortillas, warmed in the oven

1. In a large, heavy saucepan or enameled cast-iron casserole, combine the pork, salt, pepper, cumin, oregano and chipotle puree (to control the spiciness, start with 1 tablespoon; you can always add more later). Add the liquid from the canned hominy along with the bay leaf and enough water to just cover the meat (about 2 cups). Bring the soup to a boil and skim off any foam that comes to the surface. Reduce the heat, add the finely chopped onion and cook the soup, covered, at a low simmer for 1 hour.
2. Add the hominy to the soup, turn the heat up a little and cook, uncovered, at moderately low heat until the pork is tender and the liquid has thickened slightly but is still soupy, about 50 minutes. (Posole is typically eaten with a spoon. If the soup becomes too thick, you can add water to recover that delicious broth.) Ten minutes before the soup is done, stir in the chopped garlic. Before serving, add the chopped cilantro.
3. Assemble dishes of cilantro leaves, diced onion, dried oregano, sliced radishes and diced avocado; let guests garnish their own steaming bowls of posole. Serve with the lime wedges (for squeezing over the posole) and the warm tortillas on the side.

Limeade
6 SERVINGS
PREP TIME: 5 min

Squeeze the juice of 8 limes into a large pitcher. Drop in half of the crushed limes for color. Add 1 cup of sugar and stir until dissolved. Add lots of ice and enough water or soda water to make 6 cups. Stir and serve.

Sally Helweg makes a traditional Mexican soup, with some professional help from friend and Every Day food team member Chloe Osborne.

Every year, my husband, Tom, and a small group of his college friends gather in Florida for a long weekend. It began 12 years ago as a raucous spring break. Later there were girlfriends, then wives, and now a brigade of under-5-year-olds makes all the noise. We come from as far as San Francisco, New York City and Charlotte, North Carolina, to catch up, bake in the sun, drink cocktails and take turns cooking.

This year I made posole (or pozole), a fragrant Mexican soup of pork, hominy and chiles topped with any combination of diced avocados, onions, cilantro, sliced radishes and dried oregano. Posole is a one-pot dish served at Mexican fiestas, especially around the holidays. Some say it's good luck; others claim it's a hangover cure. I thought we could use both, and our friends devoured the soup, each personalizing it with the toppings.

It has been weeks since the trip, and my friend Sally Helweg has sent me an e-mail: She wants my recipe for an upcoming party. All the ones she found require at least eight hours of cooking with hard-to-find ingredients. "Didn't you prepare it in a couple of hours?" she asks.

I like one-stop shopping and pared-down recipes, and I never pass up the chance to visit a friend, so I hop on a plane to Charlotte to show Sally how to make my posole.

The first stop from the airport is Taqueria Mexico (704-552-2461) on South Boulevard, the main drag of one of Charlotte's Mexican communities. The restaurant has been serving posole every Saturday since it opened in 1993, and I want Sally to try the real thing.

There are three varieties of posole: red, white and green (the colors of the Mexican flag), depending on whether chiles are used and which type. And there are as many posole recipes in Mexico as there are cooks. The steaming bowl of soup at Taqueria Mexico is a deep tomato red—a mix of de arbol, guajillo and California chiles. Sally and I will simplify and use deliciously smoky canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce in place of all three.

Most recipes call for dried hominy, the large variety of corn that requires overnight soaking. (The most determined cooks remove the germ of each kernel so it pops open like a flower.) Again, we'll turn to the easy canned version: white hominy found in the Mexican section of the supermarket.

In Mexico, many cooks start the soup by boiling a pig's head; the resulting broth is rich with soft, gelatinous pieces of meat. But not everyone can stomach a head simmering away on the stovetop, and the expression on Sally's face as she hears about the traditional meat tells me that there's no pig's head in our future. Our soup at Taqueria Mexico includes three or four tender chunks of short ribs and pigs' trotters; we'll use diced pork shoulder.

Next stop: Sally's local supermarket, where we find everything we need. "Do you have bay leaves at home?" I ask. "Honey," she replies with her sweet Southern accent, "I've got a whole bush." Dried would have been fine, but what a nice surprise to pick one fresh from her garden.

Finally in Sally's kitchen, we set about dicing pork, pureeing chiles and draining hominy. Soon, a simmering pot of posole fills the kitchen with the smell of oregano, bay leaf and chipotle. While the soup simmers, Sally makes a pitcher of refreshing limeade. All we have left to do is pick some cilantro, slice the radishes, dice the onions and avocados and cut some lime wedges for the toppings, and we'll have a simple, satisfying posole.

Top This Posole is traditionally served with a variety of fresh accompaniments.

Lime Wedges		Radishes


White Onions		Avocado
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