The Best and Easiest Gluten Free Chicken Pozole Rojo

 

Pozole (pronounced poze-SOLE-eh) is a traditional Mexican soup that I fell in love with the moment I tried it…but just like most really good homemade dishes, this one takes time.  And it’s not super healthy.  And the most authentic recipes call for pork, usually shoulder and feet.  So, traditionalists will probably curse me out (or maybe just scoff) and perhaps even try to prove that my recipe can’t possibly taste as good, but I promise you this recipe tastes as authentic as the real deal.  AND it’s a much faster process.  Of course it is:  I cheated and used a delicious roasted rotisserie chicken and canned hominy instead of dried. 

 

But stay with me:  it’ll be worth it.  I know, for instance, that I can’t substitute the tripe in a menudo recipe because that’s the core of the dish, but I really feel that pozole is successful with a different protein, especially in this case.  And, I just can’t do pigs’ feet.  I can’t.  I remember when I was a kid, my parents would make a marinara sauce from scratch, using beef neck bones in the simmer.  I would beg for them and hoard them all for myself when they were done and the sauce was being strained–the meat was so sweet.  BUT, I assumed they were just called neck bones.  Like, people wouldn’t really eat a bone from a neck.  This had to be similar to the Funny Bone–it’s just a nickname, right?  Well, my dad was pretty blunt and let me know, with wonderfully graphic detail, that it was, indeed, the neck from a cow.  That stopped my begging really quickly and I never took another neckbone again.  In hindsight, I am offering up this compliment to him, “Well played, Dad.  Well played!”

 

So, since we’re shortcutting this recipe, we can eliminate the hours upon hours of simmering while waiting for the raw pork to cook in the broth and the hominy to become tender.  Here’s what you need to do first:

 

Ingredients:

1 whole rotisserie chicken, broken down, cartilage removed

5-6 dried Ancho chiles

6 or so dried Chiles de Arbol

8 cups of gluten free chicken broth

6-8 cloves of garlic, minced

1 large or 2 medium onions

2 25-oz cans of hominy (be sure the can says gluten free)

3 tbs. oil (vegetable or canola will work)

Salt to taste

1 bay leaf

1 tbs. Oregano

2 tsp. cumin

Optional for topping:

fresh chopped cilantro, lime, hot sauce, tortilla chips, shredded cabbage, diced radishes, chopped raw onion. 

 

Set about 2 cups of water to boil.  While waiting, remove stems and seeds from all the chiles and put them into a bowl.  Once the water is boiling, cover the chiles with the water, being sure they are all submerged (you can put a plate on top of them to help).  

While those are soaking (about 30 minutes), chop the onion and mince the garlic.  

Drain and rinse the hominy and set aside.

In a blender, combine the softened chiles, 2 tbs. of garlic and about 1 cup of the water from the soaking.  

Blend mixture until smooth, then pour into and push through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl, removing all the bits of skin from the chiles. If the mixture is too thick, add more water from the soaked chiles.

Discard the solids left in the strainer.

Add the oil to a large pot (dutch oven sized) and set heat to medium.

Pour in the onions and stir until slightly softened, then add the remaining garlic.

Stir for about 2-3 more minutes, then pour about 2 cups of water into the pot.

Add the broth, the chile mixture, and all the spices, including salt.

Bring to a boil and skim off any foam and fat on the surface.  Stir in the hominy and return to a boil, again skimming any foam.  Let this simmer for about 30 minutes, then place the chicken into the soup.  

Simmer, partially covered, for another hour, then serve.

 

You can top with any of the options listed, but our preference is cilantro, lime, hot sauce and chips.  

 

If you’d like to try a traditional Pozole recipe, I have found the one in the book Mexico the Beautiful Cookbook by Susanna Palazuelos and Marilyn Tausend to be spot-on (and I love this book for a lot of other really beautiful Mexican dishes with amazing photography).  You can find it here on Amazon. 

 

Also note that there are other varieties of pozole (I have made the pozole rojo, or red, version).  There is also verde (green) and blanco (white), which have less heat than this version.  Don’t be scared to try rojo, though, as it’s not overwhelmingly spicy.