Posole Verde — or Pozole Verde!

posole pozole

Our dear friend Bruce (aka Great Stone Face) requested posole (sometimes spelled pozole) this season and I had to do it! Posole (or pozole?) is a Mexican pork and hominy stew. It’s simple and spicy and warms your tummy. Like many Mexican soups, posole is typically served with a myriad of garnishes that make up the “vegetables” part of the meal: shredded cabbage, chopped onion, avocado, and radishes along with jalapeños and lime wedges. It’s like the Mexican version of Vietnamese pho.

I made green posole here, because that’s what I’m most familiar with. There is also a red version made with dried chilies that I’ll post as soon as I get a recipe that I like.

I used canned hominy (for shame!) because it’s surprisingly hard to find dried hominy around my parts. If you want to use dried hominy, or if that’s all you can find, here is what you need to do:

  1. Soak 1 cup hominy overnight in 8 cups or water + 1 tablespoon salt.
  2. Drain and put into a large pot with enough water to cover by an inch.
  3. Bring to boil and then simmer about 1 hour until tender. Drain and add to posole.

Posole Video

Posole Recipe – Printable!

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Posole

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4.3 from 6 reviews

  • Author: Hilah Johnson
  • Cook Time: 2 hours
  • Total Time: 2 hours
  • Yield: 4 1x

Ingredients

Scale
  • 3/4 pound fresh tomatillos
  • 1 jalapeño
  • 1/4 pound diced bacon
  • 1 medium onion, fine diced
  • 2 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 1 pound pork stew meat, cut into about 1” cubes
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon dry oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon anise seed
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 quart chicken stock
  • 1 30 ounce can hominy
  • 2 medium zucchini or calabaza squash, sliced 1/2 inch thick
  • Garnishes: shredded green cabbage, diced onion, jalapeños, cilantro, avocado, queso fresco, tostadas or tortilla chips, radishes

Instructions

  1. Peel, rinse and quarter the tomatillos. Cut the jalapeño in half. Lay all skin side up on a broiler pan and broil on high for 5-10 minutes until soft and beginning to blacken.
  2. Meanwhile, cook bacon in a large pot over medium heat until some fat has rendered out. Add the onion and garlic and continue to cook several minutes until onion is softened.
  3. Make a well in the center of the onions and add half the pork cubes, so that they are touching the pot. Brown over high heat for 2-3 minutes, then turn and brown the other sides.
  4. By now your tomatillos should be done, if they haven’t caught fire already, so go ahead and add them plus the pepper, plus any juices on the broiler pan to the pot. Leave the pepper whole because you will remove it later before serving.
  5. Add all the spices, plus the remaining pork, plus a quart of chicken stock.
  6. Drain and rinse the hominy and add it to the pot.
  7. Cover and bring to heavy simmer. Simmer one hour.
  8. Add zucchini and simmer, covered, another 30 minutes.
  9. Serve

Notes

This recipe calls for NO additional salt because the bacon, stock and hominy are all salted already. Salt to taste once the stew is finished.

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20 Comments

  1. Jamie on October 28, 2013 at 10:19 pm

    Hey Hilah, this recipe looks great! Any suggestions for replacements for meat, I’m a vegetarian but I don’t like tempeh. Also, I am not able to find good, fresh tomatillos in any supermarket anymore, would a can of mexican imported tomatillos work, rinsed and drained?

    • Hilah on October 29, 2013 at 9:06 am

      Hi Jamie!
      Maybe seitan would be a good substitute here for the pork. It holds up well to long cooking. If you aren’t terribly concerned with getting lots of protein, some cubed potatoes or butternut squash would also go well with the flavors here.
      And yes, canned tomatillos would work fine. Drain and rinse, then broil them if you can to get some color on them. Hope you enjoy!

  2. Maria on October 29, 2013 at 7:23 pm

    Hey Hilah 🙂
    I am curious how it turned out, only browning half the pork. Did you end up having some tough pieces and some tender?

    • Hilah on October 30, 2013 at 1:21 pm

      Hi Maria!
      All the pork was tender after cooking for so long, but the pieces that weren’t browned were easy to shred so you end up with some larger, intact pieces and some small bits. It’s nice. 🙂

  3. Linda on October 31, 2013 at 1:25 pm

    I made another version of this last week with chicken instead of pork. I’m guessing it wasn’t authentic, but boy howdy, was it good! The hominy gave it a taste that I wasn’t expecting. No tomatillos or bacon either, but did have jalapenos, green chilis and an entire cup of chopped cilantro! After the vegetables cooked, everything was pureed in a blender then put back in the pot and the hominy and chicken were added. It was REALLY green! But I’ll be sure to try your version soon!

    • Hilah on October 31, 2013 at 5:20 pm

      Yours sounds delicious, Linda! And pretty! Authenticity is over rated, anyway. 😉

  4. Jehn on November 2, 2013 at 11:12 pm

    Hey Hilah! I just made your posole and ate three bowls of it. It’s really good. I noticed that it’s quite similar to a dish I know as “caldo” which my mom used to always get at Mexican restaurants, the main difference being that caldo has beef instead of pork. Would you happen to know a caldo recipe that I could make for her, or a way I could modify this recipe to be more like caldo?






    • Hilah on November 3, 2013 at 9:23 pm

      Hi Jehn!
      When I’ve had caldo, it is more broth-like with a rich beef stock, meat chunks, and carrots and sometimes zucchini. You could modify this pretty easily by using beef stock and beef, omitting the tomatillos and hominy, and adding some cumin.
      I should do a proper caldo on the show sometime, though!

  5. Ralph on November 6, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    Hilah, we had the Posole Verde las night after following the exact recipe and we were very pleased with the beautiful presentation and especially the wonderful flavor. I will definitely make it again!






    • Hilah on November 6, 2013 at 8:24 pm

      That is great, Ralph! 😀 So glad y’all enjoyed it. It’s one of my favorite stews, too.

  6. Payel on November 8, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    hey Hilah, I bought all this ingredients for this recipe.I just wanted to know can i use chicken thigh insteadof pork..thank u so much.

    • Hilah on November 10, 2013 at 3:23 pm

      Hi Payel!
      It would be delicious with chicken!

  7. Gina on April 13, 2014 at 1:47 pm

    Hola Hilah, Thank you for this recipe. My husband is Latino and I wanted to make him something special for our anniversary last night. He loved it! We all did! He said it made him remember his mothers pozole verde he grew up eating. Very authentic. I can’t wait to try it with chicken next time. And maybe with red sauce. Your Tex-Mex recipes are awesome and thanks for making all your recipes easy to follow! I love your videos too, your hilarious. 🙂






    • Hilah on April 14, 2014 at 11:11 am

      Hola Gina!
      Thanks so much for the feedback. I’m happy you and your husband enjoyed the pozole. That’s a great compliment, too. 🙂 Thanks for writing!

  8. Will (Expat Texan) on November 29, 2014 at 7:04 pm

    Hon, your ingredients list doesn’t mention zucchinis. Maybe 2 medium ones right? We get canned tomatillos from Sydney but are growing them this summer from seed. We make Posole Rojo 3-4 times a winter in Australia. Wish I knew a shortcut to extracting a salsa from anchos and arbols. Labor intensive! Would also love to be able to make it in the crock pot with a minimum of precooking. Any advice? Congrats on your niño and new home.






    • Hilah on November 30, 2014 at 9:18 am

      Oh thank you, Will! I added them to the list.
      For a crock pot posole, honestly I would broil the tomatillos and everything in step 1, then skip the rest of the browning/sauteeing and throw everything in the slow cooker with just half of the chicken stock (2 cups instead of a quart) and cook on low for 8 hours or so. Leave the bacon strips whole so you can remove them at the end. Nothing worse than soft boiled bacon. Of course, if you wanted do do a little more precooking you could follow all the steps and just reduce the chicken stock, but who wants to do all that for a slow cooker recipe? 🙂

  9. Wendy on January 4, 2015 at 7:32 pm

    Dear Hilah,
    I am Mexican, and I want to tell you that the correct way to write the name of this dish is with “Z” (pozole). There is not other way. If some one write it in other way it is grammatically incorrect. Hope you can fix that. by the way, very nice web page.

    Best.

    • Hilah on January 5, 2015 at 9:02 am

      Thanks, Wendy!

  10. Great Stone Face on January 4, 2020 at 12:48 pm

    Any thoughts on how you’d convert this for the Instant Pot?






  11. Anonymous on October 16, 2021 at 8:14 pm

    This is not authentic at all. You never put squash in pozole.






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