RECIPE: Pork Posole

I love "double-duty" dinners.  You know what I'm talking about.  When you cook one thing, have leftovers and can make something else with it?

Last week I did that with a pork roast.  Initially I cooked the pork roast in the oven with only salsa verde on top (one of my new favorite ways to eat pork roast thanks to Donna!).  I made my Salsa Verde but you can buy it fairly reasonably priced.  I like La Constena brand.  You can find it in your Latin food aisle in the grocery store.

After it cooked, we shredded the pork and ate Pork Carnitas.  We used flour tortillas, but you can use corn tortillas just as well.  I like to drizzle a lime crema over them.  YUM!
 

Lime Crema
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 jalapeno, finely diced
fresh cilantro, chopped
lime juice

Mix everything together in a small bowl and add enough lime juice to make it fluid enough to drizzle.  You can add as much or as little as you like.

You might have noticed my wrinkled jalapeno pepper in the above picture.  I put them in the freezer in a zip lock baggie and when I need one, I'll pull it out and use it.

To make the carnitas, I add the shredded pork to a cast iron skillet and add 1/4 cup red salsa and 1/4 cup salsa verde to it.  Occasionally stir it around to get the pork caramelized.  Once it's heated through and browned, turn off the heat and start assembling your carnitas.

I put about 1 oz shredded pork in the flour tortilla, topped with thinly sliced iceberg lettuce, avocado slice, drizzle of the lime crema and fresh cilantro.  That's it.  Super easy and yummy!  We also like to squeeze extra lime on ours.

The second meal we ate from the pork was Pork Posole.  I've made this before, but couldn't remember the exact way I made it.  One of the reasons I like to blog is to keep track of recipes.  So here's how I made it this time.  Using inspirations from these two recipes:  chicken posole and turkey posole.

Pork Posole
1/2 onion, finely diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons oil
2 guajillo chiles, (these are dried and I found them at Aldi)
10 cups water (or chicken broth)
2 tablespoons chicken bouillon (omit if you are using chicken broth)
2 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro
2 cups cooked, shredded pork
1 large can hominy, drained
limes

Heat large Dutch oven over medium high heat.  Add oil, onion and garlic.  Saute until translucent.  Prepare the guajillo peppers.  Use a pair of kitchen shears and cut the stem off.  Shake out the loose seeds into the trash and pull out the dried membrane.  Using the shears, cut the peppers into 1" pieces; set aside.  Add chicken broth (or water & bouillon) and peppers to the pot.  Simmer for 20 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Place a little of the soup mixture at a time into a blender and blend until smooth, pour into another pot until all soup is pureed.  Return to the stove over medium heat and add cilantro, pork and hominy.  Cook for 15 minutes until heated through.  Serve with a lime and avocado if you like.

Super yum!