By Leslie Brenner
If you want to try your hand at nixtamalizing corn, but don’t want to get into the elaborate procedure of grinding it into masa, I’ve got one word for you: Pozole.
Pozole is a soup or brothy stew starring nixtamal (hominy) — kernels of dried corn cooked in an alkaline solution (the process is explained here). Pork or chicken may be used for the broth. Leave it at that, and you’ve got pozole blanco. Add tomatillos and fresh green chiles and maybe herbs and green vegetables, and you’ve got pozole verde. Forget the green stuff and instead add a sauce made from toasted red dried chiles, and pozole rojo’s in your pot.
Most pozole you find in Mexican restaurants in the United States is made from canned hominy, says Olivia Lopez, chef de cuisine at Dallas restaurant Billy Can Can and Cooks Without Borders new Mexican cuisine expert and advisor. “It’s less time-consuming,” she explains. “The cans are really cheap, as well.” And while the dish can be wonderful, that’s usually more because of wonderful broth and the condiments that go on top than the hominy.
Pozole prepared from just-nixtamalized heirloom corn, on the other hand, is spectacular through and through. The nixtamal itself (those grains of corn that have been liberated of their skin) has wonderful earthy flavor and aroma, as you can see if you taste it before it goes into the pot. It actually tastes like corn, and its texture provides some nice resistance to the tooth.
Happily, you can buy everything you need for the nixtamal — the heirloom grains and cal — from a new(ish) online store, Masienda. You’ll also find links to several of Masienda’s products, including a Pozole Kit, in Cooks Without Borders CookShop.
“You can definitely tell the difference,” says Lopez.
Making your own nixtamal can be a lot of work, mostly because in order for the grains to “flower” properly in the broth, you need to remove the tip end of the grain, known in Spanish as the cabeza (head). It’s a painstaking process that can take hours, but it’s worth doing at least once in your life.
Marisel E. Presilla, in her encyclopedic and authoritative 2012 book Gran Cocina Latina, puts it this way:
“When I nixtamalize corn for any dish — but particularly for pozole, the rich soup/stew — I view it as something very special. It is a process that requires care. Not onlly is any Mexican cook with her salt familiar with the changes the corn goes through in cooking, but she is willing to cut of the germ end of every single kernel of corn in order to eliminate the slight bitterness of the germ and make the kernels flower when cooked again. For this effort you must have your mind fixed on a high and shining purpose, great texture, and good looks, not just fifteen minutes of table fame.
“. . . Whether it is the lye used for hominy (not the same as the calcium hydroxide for treating Mexican corn) or the effect of the can, the flavor [of canned hominy] just seems horrible to me. Make pozole from scratch even once and you will know the right taste.”
There may be a worthwhile hack, however; we learned about it after we developed our recipe, and haven’t yet had a chance to test it. Lopez suggests making the nixtamal a day in advance and freezing the kernels for easier blooming, even without removing the cabezas. (We’ll update this page once we test it.)
Nixtamal kernels after they’ve “flowered” in the broth. The kernel in back, which still has its cabeza, did not bloom.
Traditionally, pozole rojo is made with a pig’s head. If you want to make that happen in your own kitchen, we commend you (and hope for a dinner invitation!). But for us mortals, outstanding results can be achieved with pork shoulder (also known as Boston butt or pork butt). Once you finish preparing the maize, it’s actually quite a simple dish to prepare.
Many recipes suggest cooking the nixtamal separately from the broth, but I found cooking them together to be ideal. The nixtamal can take anywhere from four to six hours to be tender. The pork will be ready sooner, but it can easily cook that long — or you can remove it for part of the time if you prefer, then add it back in before the end.
The method for adding ancho and guajillo chiles is pretty cool: Remove the seeds and stems, toast them briefly on a hot skillet, rehydrate them in hot water, then purée in a blender with some of their water. Heat oil and fry the sauce for a few minutes, deepening its flavor, before you add it into the nearly-cooked broth. Some recipes skip the frying step, but I feel the depth it adds is worth the small effort — which after hours of decapitating corn kernels, really isn’t a big deal.
Then comes the fun part: all the garnishes. Serve them in separate bowls, so each eater can garnish as they please with shredded cabbage (or lettuce), lime wedges (which slice through the richness), sliced radishes, chopped white onion, dried Mexican oregano, crumbled dried piquín chiles and cilantro.