The red posole this time, made with pork and various dried red chilis. This batch was from frozen – not sure when I made it. I poured the stew into plastic containers to freeze, and then took the frozen blocks out of the plastic and vacuum sealed them. Not sure how long they will last like that but I think these spent nearly a year in those seal a meal type bags.
This is my new favorite way to warm tortillas, just plop them on the burner and flip before they catch fire.
hominy
Turkey Posole
I had a couple of cubes of this frozen and put away for a rainy day. It’s sprinkling a bit, so, close enough. I’m sure there are plenty of recipes out there but this one is about as simple as can be. Bring chicken broth to a simmer, add green chilis from a can or fresh roasted if you would rather, minced onions, oregano, cumin, shredded turkey or chicken, canned hominy, salt and pepper. I garnished with Monterey jack and a few grinds of dried red peppers.
These stews can be red or green depending on your chilis. I tend to do green chilis for poultry and red for pork but that’s me. There are no rules.
Posole
Kroger had pork shoulders for 99 cents a pound so I grabbed one. I figured it was past time for a big pot of posole.
Mrs J eats hers with crushed nacho chips but I like to go with the traditional garnishes, sans cilantro because reasons. Posole as I made it here is a pork stew with hominy spiced with a sauce made from dried chilies. I soaked the chilies in hot water and then liquified them in a blender. Push the raw sauce through a sieve and saute the result in a shallow pan with a bit of oil to bring out the flavors. Stir it into the pork broth.
Tidbits
The in-laws gifted us these two fig tree cuttings and sent over a small bowl of figs from the tree they were cut from. Tasty! I hadn’t ever eaten a fresh fig before, my only exposure to figs of any sort was by way of those Newton cookies and the occasional holiday candied treat. They didn’t provide too much info on them except to say they were Italian fig trees. They say they will grow to six feet and bear fruit in the second year. Any luck and we won’t kill them before that. 
This is my second try at baking slider buns and I think I’m on the right path. Those black specks are bits of garlic that I flavored the melted butter with for the pre-bake brushing. I didn’t worry about them when it went on but I should have known they were going to char in the oven. It looks like one KA recipe will make 20 appropriately sized buns – 2-1/2 to 3 inches each.
Bea was in the pot with the jalapenos when I looked out the window but by the time I had my camera in hand she was out of it and back into her usual spot.
We had chicken enchiladas for dinner today, nothing special – tomatillo sauce, roasted poblanos, and Monterey jack. I made the corn/black bean salad I’ve done before but new to the table is the hominy/sweet corn/red bean salad. Both salads have onions and green peppers in a rice vinegar dressing.
Bitsy is taking her turn in the catnip pot. They are all just crazy for that stuff.
Chicken Posole
I said I would make posole again, this time with chicken, and did today. I was thinking white posole going into it but I talked myself into going two ways – one with green chilies and another with red ones. I can’t pick a favorite, both are very good.
Start the day before, soak the dried hominy overnight in water, then put it on to boil for a couple of hours. Plop a whole chicken into a stew pot and cook it while the posole is going. I added carrots and celery and onions along with several whole cloves of garlic to the stew pot. Bone the cooked carcass and set the meat aside, skim the fat from the stock and pour the stock into the hominy pot after straining out the solids. You can’t overcook the hominy unless you boil it dry. Break up the chicken with a fork and add it in along with two teaspoons of oregano.
Here is where you decide which way to go. I flipped a coin and it came up heads and tails. Dividing the recipe into two pots allowed me to have it both ways. (I’m sure there are more than two ways!) I started some dried chilies simmering in a sauce pan for the red posole, and opened a can of green chilies to add to the other. Each version got an onion sliced into it, the white version got the green chilies and a healthy dose of freshly ground cumin, the simmered chili pods were pureed with a slug of lime juice and a few garlic cloves and added to the other.
There are a bunch of traditional garnishes for these dishes, today I had cheese, jalapenos, and nachos for the red, and cabbage, jalapenos, and nachos for the white. Thinly sliced radishes are common, as are avocados and fresh chilies, cilantro for those that use it.
Enjoy!
Beef Posole
I saw this dried posole (hominy) the other day and bought some, just because. Mrs J says she is a fan of hominy and wanted lots of it in her next posole dish. I’ve never tried any from dried, always buying the canned product, and figured it couldn’t be too different from dried beans in the cooking. These did need quite a bit of boiling – the recipe on the label said to soak overnight, then boil for two hours before adding any other ingredient, then simmer for another hour “or until the posole is tender”. I started them this morning at eight and finally dished it up at about one thirty, adding additional water as needed to keep it covered. Not saying it needed all of that time, but it wasn’t overcooked.
I have made this with pork a lot, but tried it with stew beef this time. A very simple recipe, there’s the posole, the beef, some minced garlic, a teaspoon of oregano, an onion, some dried pepper pods (New Mexico chilies and some anchos), salt and pepper. I let the chilies cook for a while, then decided to take them out and run them through the blender. I was trying to be true to the recipe on the label but I should have just softened the chilies in a bit of boiling water and pureed them right from the start. Just add everything to the posole after the two hour boil, turn the heat to simmer, and cover.
The beef posole was good, not nearly as good as with pork but still good. I may try some with chicken next time: posole blanco.
Posole
Just a photo tonight. Here’s a recipe, this is seriously easy to do. I used some pork left over from a secret project. 
Stay tuned!
Mmm…Pozole
Yeah, yeah. Been there and done that.
Deal with it. This is seriously good stuff. I did make this batch a bit differently than the last few. I used the counter top roaster to cook the pork and added a bunch of onions and dried peppers to the pan with the meat. Cleaned a head of garlic and slipped most of the head into slits cut here and there on the roast. Took the powdered dried peppers I made a while back and gave everything inside the pan a good dusting with that, along with some onion powder and plenty of ground black pepper. Poured in a good quart of chicken stock and turned it on to 350. I shoved a temperature probe into the sweet spot and set it to beep when it got to 165. Worked like a charm.
I took the cooked roast out and set it to cool on a board and then strained the peppers and onions and other solids from the juices left in the pan. Ladle off the fat from the good stuff or do as I did–put the bowl into the freezer until the fat hardens and you can lift it out.
Drag out the blender and dump in the solids you strained from the drippings and the defatted juices and pulse to puree, add chicken stock or water to make it thin enough to pour back into the pot. Those chilies and cooked onions with a few cloves of cooked garlic make a super duper flavoring. I enhanced mine with a few chipotles in adobo sauce. The juice of a lime will work well in there.
Shred or chop the pork when it is cool enough to handle. Peel off the fat and gristly parts. Dump the meat into a big stock pot, add some hominy, a few more onions cut up into largish pieces, add enough chicken stock to cover well. Add the puree of peppers and onions and bring the pot to a simmer, keep it there for at least an hour, longer is better. Give the broth a taste and adjust for salt and heat. Add more pureed chipotles, perhaps with some red pepper flakes or whole dried chilies. Knock yourself out. I like a good bit of oregano in mine, I put in a good tablespoon-that’s in 5 quarts or so, maybe 6, of soup.
Enjoy!
What's 4 Dinner Solutions 