I think more people may be familiar with Pozole. It is a pork, hominy and chile soup. I think that it is more approachable in that the main meat portion of the dish is not tripe. As a preparer of menudo lately, I think it might be cheaper too.

My wife has generally refused to host pozole when making menudo is possible. But, I convinced her that this was something I wanted to do. It turns out that there are two types, red and green. I had never seen any other than red but it seems as though she didn’t know red existed.

We made pozole for Easter. I thought that probably the time economics of one big pot of soup beat putting some kind of meal together that included sides as well. I had one thing to shop for, one thing to prep and one thing to watch as it cooks.

I didn’t really read the instructions too carefully because once I saw the ingredients I knew how to make it. In fact, it is nearly exactly like making menudo with a few different ingredients. On Saturday afternoon, I put 7 lbs of pork hocks into the pot with 3 lbs dice pork tenderloin, two whole heads of garlic, 8 tablespoons of oregano and 6 quarts of water.

I very likely would have used half to no water if it were not for the fact that we were leaving for the evening. I didn’t want the meat to burn before the liquid was rendered out. When I make menudo, I don’t even add water to it. I turned the burner on to very low simmer. My goal would be to have the garlic dissolve, the meat fall off the bone but still have substance in the morning.

In the morning I added 3 lbs of cubed pork, 1 drained #10 can of hominy and the chiles. The original recipe called for 16 ancho chile (dried poblano chile). I felt that was a little light so I added the remainder of a bag of California chilis as well, about 20. Normally, if I wanted more flavor, I would add more of the same chile rather than mix them but ancho can have some spice to them and I was really trying to keep this spiceless.

There is a lot of mass here, the recipe was scaled to 16 quarts so salt to taste. It is going to take quite a bit of it but keep tasting, over salted soup is ruined. I know because I have done it multiple times and I sure don’t want to do it for Easter dinner.

After seasoning, let it all come together and prepare the garnish. Traditional garnish are tostadas, shredded cabbage, lime wedges, chopped white onion and sliced radish. In my house, we have to have both lime and lemon because some people prefer one over the other. I find lemon too bright and the sweeter lime is the right flavor as well as the authentic choice.

The way I made this, it was very mild. Many people like to spice it up a bit and so salsa or sliced chili peppers to add some heat could also be made. I skipped this preparation this time. I would have substituted menudo mix for some of the oregano if I had it on hand because it has chile pequin in it and it rather spicy. But, I didn’t want any leftover spices I wasn’t going to use for a while.

End Your Programming Routine: Who doesn’t like ham. We had it most Easter dinners throughout my life. I thought this twist was fun and delicious. I think it was a win on the effort front and I think that I convinced my wife that pozole is not the weaker cousin of menudo. It looks a lot the same and even tastes a lot the same, it just comes from a different family (of ingredients).