Sunday, January 10, 2021

MAKING POZOLE FOR DINNER FOR THE FIRST TIME



   I am half Mexican and half White and love to cook. I love trying to do recipes of food I have never cooked before. Don't really have a style of cooking, I really like just trying to challenge myself to trying to cook food I love. One of my favorite things to cook is Mexican. One thing I have never made before, but have great memories of my grandma making, is pozole. Now my grandma is still around, but I don't live right next door to her anymore. 

   Since my grandma don't cook all the great food she did when I was younger, I have started doing it myself and of those things is pozole. I remember coming over to my grandma's house with the whole house smelling so good from the food she cooked. Sitting down and her bring me a big bowl of pozole with some corn tortillas some freshly cut lemons to squeeze on top with some chopped onions and oregano. 

   If you are wondering what pozole is a Mexican soup made with pork and hominy. It can also be made with chicken, but we have always had it with pork. There is also different kinds like green, red, and white colored soup. Red is the one that I like the best, and is the way grandma made it. There is not a lot that goes into the soup, but the process takes some time. Since the soup was just pork and hominy I thought it would be a super fast and easy....wrong. Well easy but not fast.

   Making the sauce was something I was not expecting to be such a chore. I was thinking it was just put this or that in the water and it would turn out red and with flavor. Had to clean and roast some guajillo peppers, then put in some boiling water. Then put that in a blender with some garlic and slat. Pour that into the water with the pork that was browned already and hominy and let cook for 2-3 hours. Now of course there was some other items that went into the water like more garlic, bay leaves, and other seasonings. 

   It came out pretty good if I do say so myself for the first time trying to make it. My brother in-law who never had tried pozole before really liked it. Both my parents and in-laws really liked it, and of course my wife. My dad's only criticism was the same as my own, and that was that the pork could have been seasoned better. All they kept telling me to put was salt, and I could have added more then I did. I also think that next time I will add other seasoning to give it more flavor. 

   That is part of the fun when cooking, is figuring out how you can make the recipe better and your own thing. I have done that with other things I cook. One of the soups that everyone loves when I cook is albondigas, another Mexican soup. When I first started cooking that soup the recipe had me do one thing, but I have changed things here or there to make it my own and how I like it. I will continue to cook different types of food that I like. Even though I do stick with a lot of Mexican dishes, I am not afraid of trying to make food that is not in my wheel house. 

No comments:

Post a Comment