Heirloom Seed Fall Cooking: Three Sisters Pozole Recipe
Three Sisters Pozole Recipe:
This recipe takes some time, but it is a labor of love and meaningful tribute to both the season and our important heirloom crops. It does not take much active time and results in a delicious and nutritious soup.
Enjoy and serve to those you love most!
Prep Cherokee heirloom corn to make hominy (view previous feature here for more on this):
Start with dried whole corn kernels (500 grams or 3 cups). You can use any of the Cherokee heirloom corn varieties, such as White Eagle or Colored Flour.
Make an alkaline solution and add the corn. Add 5 grams pickling lime (cal or calcium hydroxide) to ~ 2.5 quarts of water. You want about 1% of the corn’s weight in pickling lime. If you use too much cal, you could turn blue corn green (chemistry fun!). Alternatively, you can use wood ash. Add the corn. The water should be a couple of inches higher than the level of the corn.
Heat the mixture. Cover and bring to a boil, then let simmer for 30-60 min. Check a kernel at 30 min by cutting into it. It’s ready for the next stage when it looks about half cooked but with a white, chalky center. If not yet ready, keep simmering until it is ready. Once ready, turn off the heat.
Let it rest overnight. If the corn soaked up a lot of water from the heating, poor in enough water to cover the corn by about 1/2 inch. Cover and soak corn kernels in the solution overnight for 8-12 hours at room temperature. After this, it will look like corn and sludge from the outer coating (pericarp).
Rub, strain, and rinse. In the pot, gently rub off most of the outer coating, taking about 5 min to grab handfuls gently and let it fall through your hands. Pour off the liquid, reserving the corn (now called nixtamal). Now you have hominy, which can be eaten whole in pozole (follow recipe below) or fried. Fried hominy is a tasty Cherokee dish.
Alternatively, you can purchase dried nixtamalized corn sometimes called corn posole. With this preparation, you will want to soak the corn overnight, strain and rinse, cover with salted water a couple inches above the corn level and boil for a couple hours, keeping the water level a couple inches above the corn.
Prep beans:
In a large pot, add dried Trail of Tears beans, or other beans, and water to cover by about 2”. Soak overnight or for about 8 hours. Drain and rinse.
Then add soaked beans back to pot with fresh water to cover by about 2”, 1 tablespoon salt, and a bay leaf (you could also add a cut up onion if you like). Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer slightly uncovered until cooked through (about an hour).
Alternatively, you can use 2 cans of beans, rinsed and drained.
Prep pumpkin:
Wash 4 Cherokee Tan Pumpkins, cut in half, and scrape out seeds. If you did not grow other hard squashes or pumpkins in your garden at the same time, save those seeds for future planting (simply wash off the pumpkin strings and dry in a single layer - I like to use a paper plate)!
Roast pumpkins cut side down at 400F until soft, for about an hour.
Scrape out the pumpkin flesh and mash or puree.
Alternatively, you can use 2 cans of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling).
Make the pozole:
In a large stockpot, heat 2 tablespoons oil and sauté diced onion, 2 diced bell peppers, and a couple gloves of minced garlic.
Add 2 cans of diced tomatoes, 4 cups of vegetable stock, cooked Trail of Tears beans (about 2 cups), the corn turned into hominy using nixtamalization (about 2 cups), about 2 tablespoons chili powder and 1 tablespoon cumin to taste, pureed roasted Cherokee tan pumpkin (~4 pumpkins), and salt to taste.
Cook for 1-1.5 hours or until hominy is to your texture preference (cooking longer will make it softer vs a more al dente texture with shorter cooking times).
— Sabrina McKinney
