Pozole Verde de Pollo
Simmer chicken and hominy in a tomatillo-pepita broth for a bright Mexican soup with herbal depth and gentle green chile heat.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, shaking often, until they smell nutty and begin to pop lightly. Don’t let them darken too much.
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the chicken thighs and cook for 3 minutes per side, just until lightly colored.
- Add the tomatillos, onion, garlic, poblano, jalapeño, stock, and 5 g salt. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 25 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and tender.
- Remove the chicken and rest it for 5 minutes. Remove the poblano, jalapeño, tomatillos, onion, and garlic from the broth with a slotted spoon.
- Blend the cooked vegetables with the toasted pumpkin seeds, cilantro, and a ladle of broth until smooth and thick but pourable.
- Shred the chicken into bite-size pieces, discarding skin and bones.
- Return the green sauce to the pot. Add the shredded chicken, hominy, epazote, and remaining 3 g salt. Stir well.
- Simmer for 15 minutes over low heat until the broth turns deep green, the hominy heats through, and the flavors settle. Remove the epazote before serving.
- Serve hot. The broth should be lightly thickened, bright, and savory, not heavy or pureed.
Cultural Context
Pozole is one of Mexico’s major ceremonial and family-style soups, but green pozole is especially associated with the state of Guerrero. That regional link shows up repeatedly in Mexican recipe sources, where the broth gets its color from tomatillos, herbs, green chiles, and often pumpkin seeds. The dish’s deeper structure comes from hominy, the nixtamalized corn that defines pozole across red, white, and green versions. What changes is the seasoning sauce. Our simplified route keeps the flavor intact while trimming the cooking time. Same dish family. Less kitchen punishment.
Fun Fact
In Guerrero, pozole isn’t just weekend food. In Chilpancingo, a long-running local custom is to eat pozole on Thursdays, enough of a tradition that the city is often nicknamed a capital of Thursday pozole.
Cook’s Tip
We use a one-pot chicken version with pumpkin seeds, tomatillos, and mixed green chiles, which is a strong base for a home adaptation. Protein and regional style vary, but the green sauce built from tomatillos, herbs, chiles, and pepitas is the real constant. We kept chicken for a lighter, faster home version and used canned hominy to avoid a long nixtamal-corn cooking process.
Trivia
The green in pozole verde usually comes from four key elements: tomatillos, green chiles, herbs, and often pumpkin seeds, which give the broth both color and a velvety texture.
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