Denver chef brings new culinary twist to Mexican American pozole traditions

DENVER — Christmas just isn’t Christmas without the holiday foods we grew up with, and for many Mexican Americans in Colorado, that means a steaming pot of pozole.

“These are the foods I craved growing up,” said chef Jose Avila Vilchez, who runs La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal in Denver’s Ballpark district.

Chef Vilchez grew up eating pozole in Mexico City. Every Thursday, he went with his mother and brother to taste specialties at a rate of two for one on traditional soup.

But when he moved to Denver more than a decade ago, the pozolerias of his childhood were nowhere to be found.

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“Red posole is one thing. So in 100 percent of the Mexican restaurants here, that’s what you find, a red pozole, but it was more as a side dish than a main dish,” he said.

So he opened La Diabla to serve flavors many Coloradans had never tasted before.

Although red pozole is always a favorite, Chef Vilchez has also studied recipes from all over Mexico to prepare green, white, and even black pozole.

“Our pozole negro is something unique. It’s something we invented,” said Chef Vilchez, who was inspired by a popular mole recipe in the Yucatan. The black color comes from the chilmole paste and charred rocoto peppers.

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“The flavor is just amazing, even just the broth,” he said.

But even with these innovative and varied broths, the ancient history of pozole is at the heart of each dish.

“Pozole is a ceremonial dish,” Chef Vilchez said.

The Aztecs prepared pozole from corn — which they considered sacred — and human flesh sacrificed during religious ceremonies. After Spanish colonizers arrived in America, Mexicans stopped practicing cannibalism and replaced pozole meat with pork and chicken.

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As the pot boiled, the foam bubbling to the top gave the dish its name – the Nahuatl word for foam is “pozolli.”

“Even though we lost a lot of the dishes that they made back then, Mexican pozole is still like…a celebration,” Chef Vilchez said.

Hundreds of years later, the star ingredient of pozole remains the same: corn. And Chef Vilchez uses the traditional nixtamalization process to soften the beans.

He sources high-quality corn and puts it in a pot of boiling water and cal (calcium hydroxide), which creates an alkaline solution that partially dissolves the tough skin of the corn and transforms the taste and texture of the corn. but.

Adam Hillberry, Denver7

“Once you have, like a mother pozole, a white broth in itself, then you can add the salsa,” Chef Vilchez said.

He also adds vegetables like sliced ​​radishes, cabbage, onion and lettuce, as well as meats like chicken or pork.

While Chef Vilchez serves pozole year-round, many people associate it with the holidays.

In Mexico City, he grew up eating pozole on Mexican Independence Day, “especially if it has red, white and green, just like the Mexican flag,” he said.

But here in Colorado, as well as much of northern Mexico and the southwest United States, pozole is most popular around Christmas time.

As a home-cooked family meal, “you make pozole, and that pot stays in the kitchen. It never comes out. You make it there. You let it do its thing, and once it’s ready, you start to serve in the pot”, chef” says Vilchez.

For Cristóbal Garcia – born in Valparaíso, Zacatecas, then raised in Colorado, where his mother’s family has lived for eleven generations – pozole is closely linked to Christmas.

“During the holidays preceding Nochebuenaor what we call here Christmas Eve,” Garcia said his family celebrated Las Posadas with pozole and tamales.

“It’s about communicating with your family, with your friends, with your neighbors,” he said.

Since his father immigrated from central Mexico, his mother grew up in Colorado, and his wife’s family is from coastal Sinaloa and northern Chihuahua, he enjoys trying many different pozole recipes.

“My mother-in-law makes it with a green chile base, and she sometimes makes it with chicken instead of pork,” he said.

While her sisters cook their Abuelita Red Pozole recipe, passed down for generations and now shared with you in the recipe below or download here:

For Garcia, who leads Metropolitan State University Denver’s First Generation Initiatives, celebrating with these traditional foods is an opportunity for Coloradans to reflect on the state’s culture, identity and history.

“Sometimes people say:”neither from aquí, nor from allá‘ (not from here or there). And I say: ‘I am from there and from there‘ (I come from here and there),» he said.

Whether you cook your own pozole or enjoy a bowl from a restaurant like La Diabla, Garcia and Chef Vilchez hope Coloradans will spend time communing over a flavorful meal.

Chef Vilchez said he was “blessed and very honored” to receive awards such as the James Beard Award and the Bib Gourmand from the Michelin Guide. But it means even more to him when customers say the food brings back warm memories of meals shared with family.

“When you touch someone’s soul like that… it’s just a different connection on a personal level,” he said.