Pozole Blanco Sinaloense

Pozole blanco is Sinaloan. Not Guerrero's white pozole, which has its own school and its own rules. This is the noroeste version, the one that ladles up clear and clean in Culiacan and Los Mochis and Mazatlan, with no chile in the pot and the heat decided by each diner at the table.

The technique is restraint. You build a broth from pork shoulder, neck bones, and a split pig's foot if you can find one. You start it in cold water. You skim the foam until the surface runs clear. You add white onion, garlic, bay, salt. That is the entire pot. There is no guajillo, no ancho, no toasting, no frying of chile paste. If you put chile in the pot, you have made pozole rojo, badly. The whole point of pozole blanco is that the broth is clean enough to taste the pork and the corn for what they are.

The heat comes at the table, and in Sinaloa it comes from the chiltepin. Not chile de arbol, not cayenne, not a dash of hot sauce. Chiltepin, the small wild chile that grows in the hills of the noroeste from Sonora down through northern Sinaloa. You crush a pinch between your fingers over the bowl. It is sharp and quick and gone in two seconds, the way the women in Sinaloan kitchens have eaten it for generations. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

My mother did not make this one. The Jalisciense pot was always rojo. But I learned this recipe from a senora in El Recodo who gave me her version when I told her I was writing about all 32 states. She made me skim the foam three times before she let me put the lid on. She said: 'Si la espuma se queda, el pozole se ve sucio. Y un pozole sucio no es de Sinaloa.' If the foam stays, the pozole looks dirty. And a dirty pozole is not Sinaloan. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.