It’s the first day of winter, an auspicious time to make a big Dutch oven full of soup, or sopa in the case of Mexican food. And as a relatively recent transplant from Texas to Virginia, that presents some challenges. Many grocery stores don’t sell the right stuff in Yankeeland, so if you want to try your hand at making posole (po-SOH-lay), you’re probably going to pay a visit to Amazon for some of the ingredients.

But trust me, if you get this one right, you’ll be doing it again. This spicy pork soup, made with an abundance of chili peppers, garlic, and hominy, then topped with an array of other tasty goodies will mark its place in your culinary life with the very first taste.

Ingredients

2 lbs pork shoulder (I used pork loin in this batch) cut in half.

1 large (or 2 medium) white onions, diced

6 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

1 tablespoon cumin

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon Mexican oregano. For authenticity, don’t use Italian.

2 bay leaves

1 oz. dried chilis de arbol

5 dried ancho chili peppers

8 cups organic, low sodium chicken stock

2 cups cold water

2 1/2 cups boiling water

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 15 oz cans white hominy

Shredded cabbage

Cilantro (optional for people with the soapy cilantro gene)

Avocado

Radishes

Lime

Do the following in the order provided

To start, de-seed the the chilis de arbol and ancho chilis. Try to get as many seeds out as you can. There will be thousands, but they shake out easily enough.

Soak the chilis in 2 ½ cups boiling water for 30 minutes in a large bowl. Using a small plate, weigh the peppers down so they stay submerged.

After soaking, put the peppers, half the chopped garlic and the liquid in a blender to puree. Finally, strain it all through a fine mesh strainer. Set the liquid aside.

Rub down the pork halves with a mixture of the cumin and ½ teaspoon of the salt. Set aside.

Using a large soup pot or Dutch oven, sweat ¾ of the onions till translucent on medium heat (about 5 minutes) then add the rest of the garlic and cook two more minutes.

Increase heat to medium high and push the onion/garlic mixture to one side of the pot. Lay one piece of the pork on the bare bottom of the pot and brown on all sides (about 5 minutes) Remove from pot and repeat with second piece of meat.

Remove second piece of meat and deglaze the pot with the cold water.

Add the chicken stock, ¾ cup reserved liquid from the peppers (1/2 cup if you want less heat), Mexican oregano, remaining ½ teaspoon of salt. Stir to mix and put pork back in the pot. Bring to boil, lower heat and simmer for three hours (partially covered), turning pork occasionally.

At the three-hour mark, remove pork from pot again and roughly chop. Return chopped pork to pot and add the hominy.

Fill up a bowl with the soup and top with thinly sliced cabbage, chopped onions, avocado and cilantro. Squeeze lime over the garnish and dig in.