Pozole: Or, What To Do With The Rest Of That Pork Belly Braise

I love this soup!

How about some thing that isn’t pumpkin or cinnamon, that’s warming but not too heavy, that’s luxurious but not too rich.. try this spectacular soup! It’s roughly based on pozole, which is a Mexican soup, usually with a pork base, various veggies, and pozole or hominy.

Hominy/pozole is simply field corn that has been dried and treated to a lye bath.  The thought is that thousands of years ago, perhaps wood ash - a natural alkaline, or lye, combined with corn during cooking and produced corn kernels that swelled up, lost their hull and become softer.  The process created a corn that stored longer when dried and had more accessible nutrients, as well as allowing to be formed into a dough, masa. 

This is what all corn tortillas, grits, and anything made with masa come from, much to our enjoyment.  If you can find hominy dried, you can prepare it much as you would beans, or buy it canned, which on my opinion, is absolutely delicious.  However, never having never make it from scratch, I may not be the best judge!

This pozole has the satisfying fat from the pork braise along with some additional pork short ribs for good measure.  It’s full of vegetables, lime juice & cilantro.  You can top it with pretty much anything along the lines of sliced crisp radish, chopped avocado, green onion, more fresh cilantro.

Left over pork belly braising liquid and veggies, ready to go along with the hominy

Fresh garden ingredients

Ingredients & Recipe

Serves 4-5 as a main course

If you make the pork belly braise recipe I’ve included in this blog, you can reserve half to 2/3 of the veggies and all the liquid to use as your base for the soup.  Personally, I think this is the best of both words, as you can serve the pork cut into chunks as an appetizer, or as tacos, or whatever you like really, then you get an easy second meal with this soup using the extra veggies and braising liquid.  Additionally, the two step process creates an incredibly flavorful and nuanced soup base.

If you are really pressed for time, you could just cook up the veggies & seasonings in some pre-made stock, let them simmer for a while and then move on to the Pozole recipe using this..

Or you can make the simplified version of the braise below:

For the Braise

1 lb piece of pork belly, fat side scored, thoroughly salted & peppered

2 lb mixed root vegetables, such as beet, celery root, carrot, etc roughly chopped in large pieces

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

3  cloves garlic, quartered

2 teaspoons crushed coriander seed

1 bottle of beer

Up to 2 cups of orange or tangerine juice and additional water to cover pork while braising.

Salt & pepper to taste

-In a braising pan, brown the salted & peppered pork belly very well, drain off almost all the fat that had been rendered.  You can reserve this fat for sautéing the pozole ingredients later, if you like.

-Add crushed coriander seed, chopped garlic & onion, a bottle of beer, and top up with juice/water to just cover the pork. Put the lid on the pan and pop into a 300o oven and braise for about 2.5 - 3 hours, topping up with water/juice as needed to keep the braising liquid almost covering

-About an hour into cooking about add the large pieces of vegetables

-Remove from the oven when the pork is fork tender

-Remove the pork and set aside to add to the soup later.  Save liquid  and veggies - you should have at least 2 cups or more of the braising liquid.  As it cools you can skim off the fat that will rise to the top.

For the Pozole

1 lb St. Louis style pork ribs, cut into 2 ribs each.  If you are just using the veggies and leftover braising liquid, increase this to 2 lbs. 

1 cup celery and with the leaves too if you have them, chopped

1 large onion, chopped 

3 cloves garlic, chopped 

1 teaspoon cumin, ground

1 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped 

1/4 cup of fresh oregano, chopped

1 medium jalapeño, or the equivalent of other varieties of chilis

32 oz container/4 cups of veggie or chicken stock and additional water as needed

25 oz can/2 cups of hominy

6 juicy Mexican limes, or three juicy regular limes, juiced, with a few extra ones cut into wedges for serving

2-4 cups reserved braising liquid from pork belly

Vegetables reserved from pork belly braise

Salt and pepper

If you are using the braised pork belly, cut into bite sized pieces, not too small or they will disintegrate

For the toppings: Fresh lime, chopped cilantro. chopped greens such as radish tops or mizuna, chopped avocado, chopped chilis, slivered cabbage, crema fresca, crumbled cojita cheese...

- In a large soup pan, brown the salted and peppered rib meat sections in olive oil or a little of the reserved pork fat.

-Add chopped celery, onion, jalapeño, garlic and cumin to pan with ribs and cook til the veggies are just soft

- Add the reserved braising liquid, oreganaand about 1/2 the stock then cook at a simmer until the rib meat starts to become tender, approximately 45 minutes to an hour.

-To this soup base, add the chucks of pork belly (if you are using), the reserved veggies, the cilantro, the hominy, the rest of the stock and half of the lime juice and cook for another 1/2 hour until everything melds together.

Serve with a good squeeze of lime, and toppings of your choice, such as chopped avocado,  fresh cilantro, chopped mizuna greens (my choice!) thin, slivered radish, or anything along those lines!

The pork ribs, cut into twos

Chili peppers, oh yes please

Nicely browned ribs

Make a big batch because I promise it will all get eaten

Squeeze most of the lime and leave some to cut into wedges as a garnish

Pozole Soup, topped with fresh cilantro, mizuna , and lots of lime!

Sumptuous: Tangerine Coriander Braised & Crispy Pork Belly with Winter Veg

Shown here served as a starter

What I love about this dish is that though it’s a very slow cook, you can pretty much walk away from it for most of the time.  Better still, I made this the day before and did the final 1/2 hour crisping the next day before a dinner party, to use as a starter. And that part was truly easy.. just put the braised, tender pork belly and veggies on a baking sheet with some tinfoil, pop in the oven for 20 minutes or so til crispy and browned, cut the veg and pork into bite sized pieces put on a pretty serving dish et voila, starter is served!

Coriander seed and fennel are a match made in heaven, or wherever good food comes from..

Many, many tangerines!

The richness also led to the citrus aspect, the fresh-squeezed tangerine juice. And that in turn inspired the crushed coriander seed, which has its own lemony note.  The tangerines I have coming out of my ears this year, so I had also made some marmalade of them with Serrano peppers, & I actually added a bit of that too.  And the coriander was collected from by cilantro plants that had gone to seed - so much more aromatic.

I like to use as much as possible of the vegetable.  I chop up the stems and leaves of the fennel here and add to the braise early on as by the end, these will dissolve, flavoring and enriching the braise.

Lots of s&p on that meat!

I think you could use almost any root vegetables in this dish.  I like the sweetness of beets, the celery flavor that celeriac imparts while still holding up to a braise, and fennel root for the perfumed flavor that complements everything.  The one thing I stayed away from was potatoes, because the pork belly is so utterly decadently rich that I wanted something in the braise that lightened things up a bit.  But I could see some potatoes on the side, either as a light mash, or boiled with a little butter, salt and chives.

Here it is all nicely browned and ready to go into the braise

And into the braising liquid!

Serves up to four as a main course, or six as a starter

Ingredients & Recipe

2lb piece of boneless pork belly, whole

2 large golden beets, peeled & cut into about 8 wedges

1 largish celariac (celery root), peeled & cut into about 8 wedges

1 head fennel with stalks & leaves. Strip away the most exterior covering on the  fennel root & cut into about 8 wedges; stems, chop fine, along with the ferny leaves 

1 cup of red pearl onions, peeled and whole

2 cups of fresh squeezed tangerine juice with the bits or a combination of juice and tangerine marmalade, if you like 

2 bottles of beer, something rich but not too bitter - I used a decent Weiss beer, but a spicy darker beer would work well too

Water as needed

Sea salt & ground black pepper

2 tablespoons of crushed coriander seeds

1 tablespoon of oil for cooking

1/2 cup chives, chopped fairly fine for garnish

-Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

-With a sharp knife, score the fat on top of the pork belly with diagonal cuts in two directions  about 1/2” apart to form a crosshatch or diamond pattern.  Cut all the way down through the fat, stopping at the meat.  This is easy with a sharp knife and has the added benefit of making you feel very chef-y 😉

-Liberally salt and pepper the pork, getting into those grooves as much as you can

-Heat up an braising pan with a lid big enough for the whole piece of meat ( I used a 5 qt Le Creuset braiser) & add just a splash of oil to pan. Brown the pork, fat side down, until nicely colored, then do the same with the other sides  

-While the pork is browning, prepare the vegetables as above  

 -Remove the nicely caramelized pork from the pan and drain off almost all of the  excess fat, leaving a couple of tablespoons. Um, I saved the fat to brown some rabbit in because rabbit and that bacony flavored fat = goodness!

-The coriander, the red pearl onions and the chopped fennel stems/leaves go into the pan to get sautéed for a little color  

-The pork then goes back into the pan fat side up, along with the beer, tangerine juice and enough water to bring the liquid level up to the pork fat. I also added about half  of the celeriac at this point to cook in the braise for flavor 

-Once this mixture is at a simmer, cover the pan with lid and put into the oven.  Braise for approximately 2.5 hours, then adjust as needed for salt & add the remainder of the veggies to the pan - beets, celeriac and fennel. Braise for another 1 to 1.5 hours, until the pork is tender and fork soft

At this point you can go one of two ways:

1. Remove the pork and vegetables from the pan and reduce the braising liquid on the stovetop until it creates a rich sauce, skimming the fat.  Put the pork, fat side up, and the veggies on a baking sheet lined with foil then place into a hot oven, 400-450 degrees, for 20-30 minutes until the fat is crispy and the vegetables are nicely browned and getting crispy. Then add everything back into the pan with the reduced braising liquid.  Sprinkle with lots of chopped chives and you can serve from the pan with whatever sides you like, maybe some crusty bread to soak up the braise sauce. 

OR

2. Remove the pork and about half of the veggies from the pan and reserve the liquid with remainder of the veggies for an amazing soup (recipe to follow!) and then place the pork, fat side up,the beets, fennel & celeriac on a baking sheet lined with some foil.  Place into a hot oven, 400-450 degrees for 20-30 minutes until the fat is crispy and the vegetables are nicely browned and getting crispy.  Remove from oven, cut everything into bite-sized pieces, sprinkle with lots of chopped chives & plate on a pretty serving dish.  This method works well for a starter.

Normally, with this kind of dish, you might crisp up the meat at the end separately and reduce the braise then re-combine the meat and the sauce.  Because I wanted to do this as a starter, I crisped the pork and some of the vegetables together without the braising liquid, which I reserved along with some of the veggies for a delicious soup. A good way to get two meals from basically one prep...but that’s another post!