Pozole Rojo is a delicious, hearty, rich, moderately time-consuming dish. It’s perfect for colder months or any month if you don’t let outside temperatures determine your meals. I’m going to use the word simmer a lot so prepare yourself for that. This also yields quite a bit of pozole so I hope you like leftovers.

Pozole Rojo with jackfruit instead of chicken. Use the big pot.

PLANT BASED POZOLE ROJO

prep time: 45 minutes
cook time: 3 hours

The fancy word for leftovers is “meal prepping!”

To start, you’re going to prep your jackfruit.

What you’ll need:

canned jackfruit (2)
a strainer and a towel (or paper towels)

Open your cans of jackfruit, and toss the contents into a strainer. Rinse them off and start to pull them apart so they look reminiscent of pulled chicken. After you’ve ravaged your jackfruit, put them in a towel and press them as dry as you can.

Rinsed and pulled jackfruit in the strainer. I don’t mind the seeds, you can pick them out if you do.

Now put them into a bowl and toss them in whatever seasoning (or sauce) tailored to the appropriate dish, In this case, I doused the jackfruit in salt, pepper, lime, chipotle and adobo seasoning.

What you’ll need:

salt, pepper, lime, adobo, chipotle seasoning
olive oil

Add a dab of olive oil and dust the jackfruit in the aforementioned seasonings. Now that your jackfruit is dusted in the aforementioned seasonings, you’re going to make a rojo sauce. This sounds intimidating but it’s not so bad. Again, I’ll be breaking this up bit by bit per section of the recipe. Also rojo means red.

What you’ll need:

dried chile de arbol
dried chile guajillo
dried chile ancho
garlic
red onion

Take four of your ancho chilies, cut the stems off and remove the seeds inside. They typically fall out pretty easily. This is so you don’t burn your mouth later. Do the same to eight of the arbol chilies. Now use eight guajillo chiles as well. Put all your chiles into a bowl.

Peel an entire bulb of garlic and crush it real good. Add that to the bowl.

Peel and dice an onion into chunks. Add that to the bowl.

Add some olive oil into a pot and add all the aforementioned stuff. Let everything blister a little bit and then add a cup of water. Maybe a little more. Bring the water to a boul

All of the chilies, onion and garlic in hot water. Don’t breathe this in please.

While your soon-to-be rojo sauce is in boiling water, you’re going to get a much larger pot ready, this is where the entirety of the dish will end up.

Take your pot of garlicy onion chile water and toss it in a blender. Pulse until smooth.

Scary red death sauce. Pulse until smooth. Again, add water if mixture is too thick.

Take your scary red death sauce and add it to a ziplock bag. Add your jackfruit directly in the bag too to marinate briefly. Your jackfruit will eventually get cooked in a pan and then added to your big pot.

Next, you’re going to start your broth.

What you’ll need:

vegetable broth
salt
pepper
lime
bay leaf
hominy (the big 4 pound canned one)

In your giant pot, add 96 ounces of vegetable broth. That’s three 32 oz containers for you math wizards out there. Bring the temp up to about a medium flame.

Open that big ass can of hominy and drain it in a large strainer. Give it a rinse too. Now you’re going to add all the hominy to the big pot of broth without splashing yourself.

It puts the hominy in the broth or else it gets….the…something something.

Once your hominy is swimming in broth, add a lot of salt and pepper. Squeeze an entire lime in there too.

Now the most important part is cooking the jackfruit and then adding it into your broth. Next you’re going to cook a jackfruit little by little, careful not to overcrowd the pan.

Oil a pan and add your jackfruit in over a medium flame. Let the jackfruit cook thoroughly, cook each side out as needed. As each small batch of jackfruit is cooked, add it directly into the broth. Continue to do this until all of your jackfruit has gone bye bye.

This pan is a bit overcrowded. But you feel me.

Once all your jackfruit is added to your broth, give everything a nice stir and bring the flame up high so your mixture can boil. Toss a bay leaf in there. Fuck it, throw two in there.

Now that your mixture is boiling and your house smells wonderful, throw a lid on the pot and drop the flame to low. This thing is going to simmer for three hours now. Yes, three hours and you can thank me afterward. Check on it every now and then and taste as you go. Might as well knock out those dishes too.

Three hours later, take the lid off the pozole and now you can prep your toppings.

What you’ll need:

radish
red onion
cilantro
lime
cabbage
avocado
sour cream
tostadas

Clean all of the things that need cleaning. Especially that cilantro. Dice your radishes thin and your onion moderately fine. Trim the cilantro off the stems. Cut the cabbage however you cut cabbage.

I waited til the end to open the avocados so they didn’t turn to mush. Cut up some limes.

One of the limes pictured got squeezed into a beer.

Scoop a bunch of pozole into a bowl and throw all your toppings on there. Batch the rest however you want to. Pozole freezes very well too. Enjoy.