Chicken & Hominy Soup

Red chicken pozole scaled down to a thermos. What hominy is, which aisle it sits in, and why the lime goes in at home instead of the lunchbox.

Makes

4 lunches

Hands on

25 min

Start to finish

65 min

Keeps

4 days in the fridge, better on day two

• 1 can (25 oz)white hominy, drained and rinsedField corn soaked in lime until the hulls slip off and the kernels swell into something chewy. Sold in a tall can in the Latin aisle or with the canned beans. Plain canned hominy is corn, water and salt.
• 6boneless, skinless chicken thighsThighs. Breast turns dry and stringy once it has been cooked, chilled and reheated.
• 4 cupsgluten free chicken stock
• 3dried guajillo chiles, stems and seeds removedMild, more dried fruit than heat. Sold in a plastic bag near the dried beans.
• 1dried ancho chile, stem and seeds removed
• 1/2white onion, quartered
• 4garlic cloves
• 1 teaspoondried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoonground cumin
• 1limeFor the pot at home, not for the lunchbox.
• salt
• shredded cabbage and sliced radish, optionalOnly if your child eats them. Packed dry, in their own container.

1. Toast the dried chiles in a dry skillet over medium, about 30 seconds a side, until they go flexible and smell like raisins. If they darken, the whole pot turns bitter.
2. Put the toasted chiles in a bowl, cover with a cup of hot stock and soak 15 minutes.
3. Blend the chiles and their soaking liquid with the onion and garlic until completely smooth. Pour it through a strainer into your pot, pressing with the back of a spoon. The skins left behind in the strainer are what makes homemade pozole gritty.
4. Add the rest of the stock, the chicken thighs, oregano and cumin. Cover and simmer 25 minutes, until the chicken pulls apart with a fork.
5. Lift the chicken out, shred it with two forks, and return it to the pot with the drained hominy. Simmer 10 minutes more, then salt to taste.
6. Off the heat, squeeze in juice from half the lime. Taste it and add the other half if it needs lifting.

1. Preheat the thermos while the pozole comes back to a full simmer, then empty it and pour.
2. Hominy is the reason this dish suits a thermos. Unlike rice or noodles it is already fully swollen, so it sits in hot broth for four hours and comes out the same texture it went in.
3. Stir the pot right before you fill, and give the thermos a swirl before the lid goes on. Hominy and shredded chicken sink, and a child who opens it to four inches of plain broth on top decides it is broth.
4. The lime goes in the pot at home. A wedge in a bag means a child squeezing citrus over an open thermos at a crowded table, and it lands on the table.
5. Cabbage, radish and tortilla chips go in a separate container, dry, added by the spoonful. Cabbage stored in the broth overnight goes limp and turns pink.

• The broth feels gritty on the tongue. The blended chiles went into the pot without being pushed through a strainer.
• The whole pot tastes bitter and nothing fixes it. The chiles scorched in the skillet. Thirty seconds a side is the whole job.
• The chicken is dry and stringy. Breast instead of thigh, or a hard boil instead of a covered simmer.

Two things to read, and the chile aisle is the one people miss. Whole dried guajillos and anchos have one ingredient, which is why this recipe uses them. Ground chili powder, adobo seasoning and packet pozole mixes are blends, and blends are where wheat flour or wheat starch turns up as a bulking or anticaking agent, so either buy one that carries a gluten free claim or stay with whole chiles. The stock is the other one and it takes the same look any pot of soup does, since cubes and concentrates can carry wheat or barley in the flavoring. Plain canned hominy is corn, water and salt, so read that can once and then stop thinking about it.