Monday Munchies: Pozole

Back to the Alton recipes for a minute, we have another cold weather recipe. In his introduction for the recipe, Alton states "Pozole can be prepared exactly 6,483 different ways," but this is his personal favorite.

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The ingredients he lists and the ingredients we used are a little different. Here are his ingredients needed:

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1&1/2 cups chopped onion
• 5 cloves garlic, minced (or 5 tablespoons from a jar)
• 1 to 1&1/2 pound pork roast, trimmed and cubed
• 1 smoked ham hock
• 1 (28 ounces) can hominy, drained
• 2 dried ancho chiles (chopped)*
• 1 quart beef stock
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• salt
• pepper

Now, for the pork roast we substituted chicken of the same weight, and the ham hock was replaced by turkey bacon. The dried oregano we did not have by accident, so we used Italian seasoning, which contains oregano. So, as you can tell, there really are a lot of ways you can fix pozole, as long as you always have hominy in it. Alright, so there are the ingredients, now here are the steps:

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Once the onion is cooked, move it to the slow cooker to wait on the rest of the food.

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Now just turn the slow cooker to high and let that sit for 2 hours. Drop down the heat then, and let cook for another 2-3 hours. If you used a ham hock, then once the 4-5 hours are up, tear off the meat and add it back to the soup. Now the pozole is ready to serve! I liked this recipe, although to me it could have had a little more flavor. But, feel free to try this recipe, and then mess around with it to find a version you like! I hope you enjoyed this tasty blog post, and leave some comments on Facebook or the comment section below!

* When chopping the ancho chile, be careful! The chile may be dried, but there are still some oils. Make sure to wash your hands thoroughly after you are finished with it, or when you touch your face your eyes will burn.