Instant Pot Turkey/Chicken Pozole Rojo

Sometime over the weekend of Thanksgiving we often have a second group of people, yes, friends over. The main purpose of this is to help me put my leftovers to good use. My kids call this our friendsgiving, except we do this whenever and with whatever. All things considered, I wanted something lighter and something that I could either freeze or extend to another day. Enter pozole.  I liked the idea of adding shredded cooked meat, and used turkey for this recipe. The good news is that,

• If you want to keep this meatless, that is fine it is a very flavorful and satisfying stew on its own.
• If you want to sub with rotisserie chicken you can.
• Adding in uncooked meat while the stew is cooking is totally a good idea.

So let’s talk pozole.

Also called posole, this mexican stew like soup is usually made with pork. The star of the dish is hominy.  This version is the rojo or red posole, the other possibilities are verde or blanco. We shall save the others for a different day.

Corn treated with an alkaline solution and dried. This process boosts both the nutritional profile and the taste. Win Win. Now, you can find canned hominy, but with a little planning and the instant pot, using dried hominy can be all yours. The cooked dried hominy, is of course much tastier. It also gives the posole a huge depth of flavor, counteracting and balancing the lightness of using turkey or chicken in this dish.  Treat the dried hominy the same way as you would beans, soak for a few hours.

The fun part about the posole is that you can serve with an assortment of chopped vegetables and fixings – sliced radishes, avocadoes, carrots, lime, jalapenos… basically you get the drift. All of this makes this the perfect casual dish for a large motley group people as my brood is. Individually they are not fussy, however collectively they are quite a crazy assortment. And just like that, this peaceful weekend is over. The weather outside is snowy, making this just the perfect meal for our sunday supper, mid-week comfort meal, or anything else you can think of.

Just a couple of thoughts,

• If you are using fresh hominy, do not forget to soak for a few hours,
• If you are using canned hominy, reduce cooking time by 10 minutes.
• To use uncooked meat, I suggest using bone in, skinless chicken just remove the chicken after it is cooked, shred and discard the bones and throw it back in. This is the better way to go, unless you have extra cooked chicken on hand.

And people it is holiday season, if you are cookbook shopping please do consider copies of mine, links below.

If you like this recipe and want more ideas, do join my Indian Instant Pot  and Air Fryer Facebook group .

Pick up a copy of my Instant pot cookbook Instant Indian  here, along with The Bengali Five Spice Chronicles and Spices and Seasons.

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