Jessica Thompson is the author of the Amazon best-selling mystery novels A Caterer’s Guide to Holidays and Homicide and A Caterer’s Guide to Love and Murder. She also curated and featured her own short stories in a family friendly anthology of campfire stories, Beyond the Woods: A Supernatural Anthology.
Description of her upcoming novel Shoot, Shovel & Shut Up (Pub date – Aug. 29):
After a fight over the family ranch, Dad’s young fiancée is found dead. Bria risks her family’s disapproval to sneak around and investigate as the tragedies pile up. Luckily, she has help from her childhood crush and from the handsome new deputy.
When new love blooms in two directions and her main suspect dies, she must grow around her grief to discover the family’s secrets before she loses everyone she loves.
Pozole de Pollo
In Shoot, Shovel & Shut Up, Sam leaves Mexico to work on the Hees ranch and quickly becomes part of the family. The main character, Bria, and her mother learn how to make this delicious pozole soup recipe to help Sam feel more at home.
Recipe
Cooking Time: 2 hours
Tools needed: blender, can opener, fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth, big stock pot, another medium pot
This is a chicken pozole with two different sauces to add. Mix in the dry chile salsa if you want Pozole Rojo and mix in the tomatillo salsa if you want Pozole Verde. To save time you can use cooked chicken and premade stock but it won’t be as tasty. Luckily this makes a big batch because it’s even better the second day!
Salsa Roja
5 dry guajillo chiles
3 arbol chiles (or less if you don’t like spice)
Water
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tablespoon salt
Salsa Verde
3 poblano (fresh ancho) chiles
2 fresh jalapenos, stems, ribs, and seeds removed
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 jar (about 17 ounces) salsa verde
½ bunch cilantro
½ teaspoon salt
Soup
1 whole chicken, cleaned and whole or cut into sections
1 head garlic, peeled
½ yellow onion, roughly chopped
3 bay leaves
3 tablespoons salt, or more to taste
1 huge can of hominy, around 108 ounces, drained and rinsed
¼ cup fresh or 2 tablespoons dry Mexican oregano, chopped
1 tablespoon salt
Toppings
½ yellow onion, finely diced
5 radishes, thinly sliced
¼ head cabbage, finely shredded
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 large or 2 small avocados, diced
More Mexican oregano
More jalapeno, thinly sliced
Directions:
- In a big stock pot, bring your whole chicken with a head of garlic, ½ and onion, 3 bay leaves, 3 tablespoons of salt or more, and enough water to cover it up to a boil. Keep in boiling water for about an hour, or until completely cooked.
- While you wait for your chicken stock to boil, roast your chiles by putting poblano, guajillo, and arbol chiles on a cookie sheet. Roast in a 500 degree oven for about 5-6 minutes. Remove pan from oven and scoot all the dry chiles into a medium saucepan. Flip the fresh chiles and roast then for another 10 minutes, then set them aside to cool. Heat the dry chiles in enough water to cover them. Boil your dry chiles until they become soft and pliable, about 20 minutes.
- After an hour of boiling your chicken stock, remove from heat and take the chicken out, waiting a moment to let the juices drip out of the chicken and back into the pot. Place chicken on a cutting board to cool for about 30 minutes. Strain the garlic, onion and bay leaves out of the stock. Save some stock for later use and keep about 2 quarts in the pot.
- While you wait for your chicken to cool and your chiles to soften, your roasted poblano chiles are probably cool enough to touch. Process those chiles by peeling off the papery skin and removing their stems and seeds. Blend those poblanos with jalapenos, 3 garlic cloves, the jar of salsa verde, ½ a bunch of cilantro, and ½ teaspoon salt. Now you have much better green salsa! Set aside as a mix in for the finished soup. And rinse your blender because you’re going to need it again.
- When cool enough, shred chicken meat and discard bones and skin. Set meat back into the stock pot. Add hominy, Mexican oregano, and 1 tablespoon of salt. Heat over medium high heat and boil for 20-30 minutes while you finish everything else.
- When dry chiles are softened, blend then with 6 garlic cloves, 1 cup of their cooking liquid, and 1 tablespoon salt. Strain through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth-lined colander over a big bowl. The liquid is what you really want here. Clean out your blender with another ½ cup of cooking water, then throw that in the sieve too. Press and squeeze the mixture through the sieve until you have beautifully red sauce in your bowl and crumbly mush in your sieve that looks like wet coffee grounds. Discard the dry part and set aside the sauce to use in the finished soup.
- Use any remaining boiling time on the soup to prep your toppings, then serve immediately or reheated the next day.
- Serve a bowl of soup with one of the salsas mixed in. Enjoy with cabbage, onion, radish, cilantro, avocado, and oregano and jalapeno to taste.
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