The the other day I decided I would make Pozole. It ended up pretty good, I can’t complain, but I’m not sure if I would actually have it over what I usually make for “Mexican chicken soup”, which is me marinading chicken in a bunch of spices including smoked paprika, and stewing it with onion and green pepper until it shreds. I was wondering, what flavor should I be going for?
I used dried hominy, which I soaked overnight. I made chicken stock from chicken carcass and some veg, took that out, and then put in 2 skinless chicken breasts + the hominy. The soup ended up tasting quite strongly of the hominy, which has that distinct tortilla chip flavor – I think I could have lessened that by cooking the hominy separately and adding it to the soup after it was cooked?
For the red sauce, I used 6 guajillos, 4 anchos, and an old chipotle + Morris pepper that I had lying around. I lightly toasted and ground those up with some of the stock (after soaking) + half an onion + lots of garlic. I tried to fry the sauce in some olive oil like some recipes said to do but I didn’t really get my pan hot and it more like bubbled very lightly for 5 minutes, I figured I didn’t know what I was doing in this step so I just dumped it in the soup thru a strainer. Does frying it / toasting the chilis harder impact the taste? I also seen some recipes where the hominy itself was toasted…
I put in a good amount of Mexican oregano, and the stock had some bay leaf and black pepper, but I ended up needing to add lots of salt and MSG at the end to pump up the savoriness.
It just ended up tasting like a nixtamalized corn soup, the hominy was the main flavor and I feel like the chicken totally got lost in the background. The red chili sauce gave it a bit of an earthy background note but again, I found I had to season it very heavily with salt at the end to get it to my liking, and it still kinda felt “light”, I feel like I’m missing some kind of aromatic component or savory element to make the soup pop more. Should I have cheated and put in a chicken boullion packet, lol?
I’ve seen lots of red pozole recipes made with pork, seems like that stronger flavor would be less likely to fade into the background like the chicken did…
TLDR: what are the main flavors in red pozole and what other aromatics can I add to kick it up a notch?
by Rare_Bid8653