On Saturday mornings, I try to make a big pot of something that will last a few days, because Mary works such wacky hours and we usually don’t have dinner together. Today I made posole.
(Note: we’re vegetarians, so I didn’t make it with pork, just Impossible Burger. I didn’t add jalapenos, since my wife has a more delicate palate.)
This got me to wondering, though: why do we USAians associate hominy with the South, and why don’t we eat more of it, since we’re swimming in corn in this part of the world? Hominy is just nixtamalized corn, very healthful, since it enables better digestion of tryptophan and assists in the production of niacin, but it’s an Aztec/Mayan food. Are Southerners more obliged to contributions from our Mexican neighbors than is commonly acknowledged?
Also, Minnesotans should be pre-adapted to like hominy — lutefisk is just nixtamalized cod, after all.
Looks good.
There are a lot of different recipes for posole soup.
I would cut the amount of meat down and use chicken or turkey instead. Cut the salt way down.
Add oregano or marjoram and cumin.
Close to my recipe. No pork, no added salt, much more onion, oregano and chipotle spice.
As a European I had to look up Hominy and nixtamalization. Never heard of preparing food stuff like that. Don’t think I’m gonna find that stuff in the local store..
Interesting that after introducing maize into Europe but not bothering to learn about nixtamalization from the Indians, pellagra became a problem in areas where it became important.
From what I’ve read, I think that settlers in the southeastern US adopted hominy and nixtamalization directly from the indigenous peoples of that area. Those people may in turn have adopted it from indigenous people in modern Mexico, perhaps along with the spread of maize/corn cultivation northward.
I can’t answer the question of why hominy is associated with the South so strongly, but I suspect it has something to do with the poverty of the farmers. As my mom would say, they didn’t have much but they had something to eat and that would be what they could grow|…corn bread, grits, and beans. We never had hominy because my dad didn’t like it, but we had tons of grits, which is made from hominy. Per Wikipedia, grits originated with the Muskogee who lived in the Southeast before the relocation. Corn was not just an Aztec/Mayan food, of course.