Ingredients

Serves 12

2 3-pound chickens, cut into serving pieces (For Pork Pozole, substitute with 6-pounds pork shoulder/butt)

Kosher or coarse sea salt

2 ancho chiles, rinsed, stemmed and seeded

1/4 cup chopped white onion

Pinch of ground cumin

1 teaspoon Kosher or coarse sea salt

Accompaniments, as desired

1 head romaine lettuce, thinly sliced

Dried ground chile, such as piquín

Dried Mexican oregano

Tortilla chips or tostadas

Refried beans

Directions

Place the chickens in a large pot and add water to cover by at least 2 inches. Add the onion, cilantro and 1 tablespoon of salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the chicken is cooked through and tender, about 40 minutes. Drain, reserving cooking broth.

When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove skin and bones and shred into bite-sized pieces. In the pot, combine the hominy and 2 cups of water with the shredded chicken and its broth. Taste for salt, add more if necessary and cook for 10 minutes or more; the pozole should be soupy.

Mexican cook's trick: Keep in mind that if you decide to substitute for the Pork option, the pork takes twice as long to cook, reserve the broth to add to the pozole.

For Chile Puree,

Place the chiles in a medium saucepan, cover with water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Simmer for 10 minutes or until soft. Place the chiles, along with 3.4 cups of their cooking liquid, the onion, garlic, cumin, cloves and salt in a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Pass the puree through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl, pressing on the solids with the back of the wooden spoon to extract as much liquid and essence as possible.

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Add the chile puree and bring to a boil, then simmer for 6-8 minutes, partially covered with a lid (because it will be pungently good you may cry), stirring occasionally, until thickened, remove from the heat.

Stir in the chile puree to the while pozole and cook for 20 minutes for the flavors to fully macerate. Taste and adjust the salt.

Serve the pozole in large soup bowls, with the garnishes in bowls on the table so guests can customize their pozole experience.

Hominy, or maíz cacahuacintle, also known as giant white corn or maíz mote pelado, looks like corn kernels gone wild. White and super meaty, these giant kernes are an excellent and healthy choice for any stew our soup. Hominy is rich in Vitamin b, has about 4g of fiber per single cup, almost half the calories than white rice (120 calories vs. 250 calories in rice), naturally gluten-free and virtually zero fat (1 gram per cup).

Recipe Courtesy of "Pati's Mexican Table" Cookbook.

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But not everyone holds all pozoles on the same pedestal. People—and even entire regions, cities, and towns—tend to have deep loyalties to only one camp: red (pozole rojo), green (pozole verde), or white (pozole blanco).

From the day I could hold a spoon, I’ve been partial to rojo. Bold, bright, rich and festive, I love it not only because I grew up eating it, but because it speaks to me of celebration. (My mother used to make pozole rojo for every and any event, including my wedding.) So you can imagine how shocked my family was when I let a second type of pozole deep into my heart: the velvety, sleek, and nurturing pozole verde.

Of course, at their core, most pozoles are the same. They start with the earthy, sink-your-teeth-in depth of cooked hominy along with its thickened broth. Known in Mexico as maíz cacahuacintle or maíz pozolero (and sometimes known in the U.S. as simply “pozole”), the hominy is cooked just until the tops merely open, blooming to reveal its signature chewy texture. That base is typically mixed with pork or chicken, vegetables, herbs, and aromatics. If you stop here (and plenty of cooks do), you’ve got pozole blanco—all you have to do is garnish it with the usual suspects of dried oregano, radishes, cilantro, onion, one or another kind of crushed dried chile, and a squeeze of fresh lime. Eat it with a crispy tostada and you’ve got a meal.

 When a blanco pozole goes rojo, it’s thanks to a red seasoning sauce that’s added near the end of the process. This sauce is typically made of dried chiles such as anchos, guajillos, or colorados; some seasonings and spices; and, sometimes, tomatoes. To take a pozole to verde territory, a green seasoning sauce is added. The most famous versions come from the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast, and include green ingredients such as poblano, jalapeño and/or serrano chiles; fresh lettuce (sometimes); and radish leaves. Instead of using tomatoes, bright green and tart tomatillos are used; sometimes other green ingredients are added, like pumpkin seeds, which add a velvety finish and nutty taste.

 I’ve fallen for pozole verde of all kinds: chicken, pork, even a regional variation made with beans. A vegetarian pozole, the base is a generous pile of mushrooms (any kind works) that are cooked until their juices release and they start to brown. A green seasoning sauce made from tomatillos, poblanos, and an optional serrano is added and cooked to thicken, then the hominy and broth get mixed in. Finally, like all pozoles, it is garnished to taste—I like pungent radishes, fragrant oregano, crunchy onion, tender leaves of cilantro, and a healthy squeeze of lime juice. Chased with bites of crunchy corn tostadas and it’s a pozole that even a rojo devotee can love.