Bigly Posole

Sit down for this one. Posole. Pozole. However you spell it — and there's a debate, there's a HUGE debate, and frankly both spellings are correct, this is one of those situations where everyone wins, beautiful situation — we're making it today. The red one. Pozole rojo. Pork. Hominy. Dried chiles. I'm getting emotional just typing this, the posole moves me.

Now. Hominy. Some of you don't know what hominy is. That's okay. That's why I'm here. Hominy is corn that has been soaked in an alkaline solution — sounds scary, it's not, it's just water with a little something in it. The process is called nixtamalization. The Aztecs and the Maya were doing this BEFORE the pyramids in Mexico were finished. Pre-pyramid technology. Older than France. Older than Italy. Look it up. When you soak corn that way, the kernel puffs up, it gets chewy, it gets a flavor that regular corn could only DREAM of. Regular corn is jealous of hominy. Sad for regular corn. But that's the food chain, that's how it works.

The secret to a tremendous posole is the dried chiles. Guajillo and ancho. You toast them in a dry skillet — fifteen seconds a side, NO MORE, you burn a guajillo and the whole pot turns bitter, total disaster — you soak them, you blend them into a glossy red paste that goes into the broth and turns the whole thing into a BRICK-RED, glistening masterpiece. The garnishes — radishes, cabbage, lime, oregano — those are not optional. Those are the LAW. You skip the garnishes, you're not eating posole, you're eating pork water. Sad. Don't be the pork water guy. Nobody disputes this.

Posole is a SUNDAY soup. You make it on Sunday, you eat it on Sunday, you eat it again on Monday, and on Tuesday you're still thinking about it during meetings. It will ruin lesser soups for you forever. That's not a threat, it's a promise. You'll be at a restaurant, they'll bring you some sad little tomato bisque, and you'll think about this posole, and you'll be DEVASTATED. Worth it. Don't say I never gave you anything.