Here are my first thoughts about Juanita’s Pozole:

CornNut Soup.

That is all.

Just kidding, there’s more. Well, I decided to skip a lame joke about how much I love to eat Juanita’s pozole (as in “everybody say hey, we want some Pozo-le”). Homina hominy, haha. But still, there’s more to say. I also decided to skip a poll on who is hotter: the gal in the Juanita’s or the Sunmaid logos. (Incidentally, I think the Sunmaid gal is a little bit last century’s news, and gosh if her digital facelift sorta makes me think of an fugly bonneted version of Lara Croft.)

No, there is more to the pozole made by Juanita’s Foods than just that. And surprisingly, the majority of it is rather favorable. I say surprisingly, because usually my untrained eye tends to pick out the absolute worst mystery canned foods possible. This leads to lot of dumped meals, which depresses me - especially in this depression where we shouldn’t be wasting food if possible.

Not so with the pozole. I actually made 2 different meals for two people out of this one large can. That’s the first thing about it - It’s a really big can, almost 2 lbs worth of soup. And the second thing is the price - this was a definite impulsive buy at only 99 cents. But I liked it so much, that I later went back and bought more cans at the the same price. I’ll take this as earthquake emergency food over absolute balderdashcrap like VanCamp’s Pork&Beans. Ugh on that. Yum on the Pozole.

I guess it’s at this point that I should admit something. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never really tried pozole before, despite living in the midst of a veritable paradise of Mexican restaurants all my life. I’ve tried a lot of different Mexican foods, but this one was off the radar.

I knew it was a soup/stew and that it had something to do with corn. For those of you who, like me, are pozole virgins (I want to make a joke here but I can’t quite make the connection) - this is a Mexican style pork and hominy soup. From Wikipedia: “a traditional pre-Columbian soup or stew from Mexico and New Mexico… made from hominy, with pork (or other meat), chili pepper, and other seasonings and garnish…”

With that description out of the way, we get to the CornNuts connection. Ah yes, many a pleasant day as a kid was whiled away obliterating unsuspecting molars with those oversized pieces of corn. I actually don’t know exactly what type of corn Hominy is, or even if it’s a different type (is the large size only due to the soaking treatment with the lye solution?) and I want to prevent you from falling asleep from wacky pseudo-agricultural BS. So, I’ll leave that up to you to discover in your free time.

But yes, seeing as my only experience with larger corn kernels has been CornNuts, this is what I thought of. CornNuts Soup. Juanita’s Foods Pozole is a pork broth based soup, flavored with chile peppers and Mexican spices. I thought at first it had tomato based product in it, but from the ingredient list, I don’t think it does.

The main parts of the soup are the hominy corn and the chunks of pork. Maybe I was just still pissed off from the non-porkiness of the VanCamp’s Pork&Beans sweetcrap I had earlier, but this pozole was really amazing. See for yourself in the picture - I just didn’t expect gargantuan chunks of pork in a can of soup like this. They were truly large. The chunks in the photo are smaller than the ones in the can were. I actually had to break them up. It was like playing Pork Asteroids.

The abundance of pork seems supremely generous, I can’t figure it out. Oh sure, I’m sure some naysayer out there has a tale of how this is inferior pork lips, snouts and asses and blah blah blah. Dude. It cost a dollar. It tasted pretty much like some sort of pork shoulder to me. Well, to be fair - it doesn’t say exactly WHAT kind of pork it is…

Actually, I have the suspicion that this can of pozole isn’t normally that cheap - especially after seeing it being sold on a online Mexican grocery site for $6.95!

The large hominy pieces were pretty good and there was a ton of it in the soup. They taste like softened corn-nuts, but have a masa-like texture that reminds me of the outer corn parts of tamales. Indeed, I think that they often make masa out of ground up hominy. I think that they leave part of the corn kernel shell on, so sometimes you encounter some rather rough bits on the pozole. But that didn’t deter me - I had an enormous bowl.

Did I mention this is a 30.5 ounce can?

We ate pozole for lunch, pozole for dinner and I also had pozole the next day. I should’ve eaten it in the morning since I’ve heard that, like Menudo, it’s a favorite for breakfast. I also hear that there are an absolute ton of “garnishes” that are eaten with pozole. The can label suggests fresh radishes, oregano, shredded cabbage, chopped onions and lime. We actually did something rather weird - we chucked some chopped up Kale in it, like you would do for a Tuscan bean soup. It was pretty good.

I also threw some grated parm cheese in it and that gave it even more body. Some people might think the soup is a little “watery”, but I believe it’s supposed to be that way. The cheese thickened it up nicely.

The overall flavor was a little bit on the salty side - but if you know me, you know I always complain about foods being too salty. I added a little water and it was fine. The spices were just about right, but I felt it could use a little kick with cayenne pepper. There was a little bit of “metal can” taste to the soup, but it wasn’t as bad as some other canned food I’ve had.

Ok, the story is almost done here. Truthfully, it’s hard to make any more jokes about this pozole. I was just very surprised at how decent this was. I mean, at a dollar a can, I wouldn’t complain too much if it was crap. But it was rather good - I suspect you could use this as the base for a more “homemade” type of soup if you doctor it up enough.

Price: $0.99 for 30.5 oz.
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 9/10

[Editor’s Note: Dear Sunmaid - I apologize for dragging your gal’s likeness through the mud. She actually is kinda cute in that Uncanny Valley sort of way.]