Grannie Annie’s Pozole

I don’t often do recipe posts. Honestly, I don’t often cook. But my friend Sarah Shotts is working on an awesome new adventure, Project STIR. She wants to create videos of families cooking together and passing down recipes and kitchen secrets.

Her project really hit home for me as I lost my Mother in August and my Dad’s Mom last October. What I wouldn’t give for a few more hours in the kitchen with either one of them.

So many of the things that make a dish delicious can’t be found on the recipe card. I hope Sarah’s project helps to preserve dishes for other families and cultures.

I decided to share my Grannie Annie’s Pozole.

Like most grandmas, Grannie Annie was happiest with a
 baby in her lap. That's Vallie at about 3 months.

I grew up in Texas, but my Dad’s family lived for several years in New Mexico. In those years, my Grandmother picked up several culinary traits from the Hispanic and Native American cultures in the Jemez Mountains. She made homemade tortillas and sopapillas and put green chilies in everything.

Pozole is a prehispanic soup traditionally made with pork and hominy. According to Dad (and verified by Wikipedia), the word pozole actually translates to simply ‘hominy’ in the native Aztec language.

Our family always ate Pozole on New Year’s Day, but I wanted to share it because it’s one of the most unique dishes we eat.

Bonus! It’s super easy and can be made in the crock pot!

I had to call my Dad for a recipe. Turns out there’s not one written down, so he recalled the recipe from memory.

POZOLE

3 big cans hominy (drained)

2 cans of Green Chili Enchilada sauce

1 can for chopped green chili

Jar of chopped pimentos

Pork or chicken cut to bite size

Salt and pepper

You may need to add a little water to cover all of the ingredients in the crock pot.

It takes 3 to 4 hours for the meat to cook and it is ready to eat.

He said Grandma used to make it with dried hominy that she soaked overnight, but it was just as good with canned hominy.  Grandma was very particular about how her dishes looked in the bowl, so she would buy some yellow and some white and then add pimento to make it look pretty.

We fixed the Pozole late morning and let it cook for most of the afternoon.

We made ours with chicken, but pork works just as well. I wanted to take a picture of the cut-up chicken, but I was chasing kids while Dad was doing the work.

Even the kids enjoyed it.

I love a good crock-pot recipe.
So easy and great for this time of year.

We topped it with shredded cheese and ate it
with flour tortillas. Dad warmed the tortillas in the
skillet to take the ‘store-bought’ taste out of them.