Hominy Beef Chili

August. The heat. The endless, punishing, magnificent El Paso heat that turns the city into a kiln and the bakery into a furnace and my body into a mechanism that produces sweat and bread in equal measure. I have been baking in this heat for three summers now and the heat hasn't gotten easier — it's gotten familiar, which is different. Familiar doesn't mean comfortable. Familiar means you know the enemy's patterns and can work around them.

Back-to-school preparations. This year the list is shorter — four children instead of five — and the shortness is its own kind of inventory. Isabella needs AP textbooks. Sofia needs school supplies and the bakery supplies that she now considers equally essential (she put "label maker refills" on the school supply list and I didn't argue because the label maker is more educational than most textbooks). Diego needs graph paper — always graph paper, reams of graph paper, because Diego thinks on graph paper the way other people think in their heads. Camila needs new shoes (the growth schedule continues at an alarming rate) and a new backpack because she covered the old one in stickers so thoroughly that the zipper no longer functions.

Luis Jr.'s third Sunday call. Five minutes. He sounded stronger. More clipped. The sentences are getting shorter, the way military sentences are short: subject, verb, done. He said: "I'm adapting." He said: "The push-ups are easier." He said: "I still miss your tortillas." Three sentences. Each one a world. Adapting means he is surviving. Easier means his body is changing. Tortillas means his heart hasn't. The heart is the constant. The push-ups change the arms but the heart stays, and the heart still wants flour tortillas from a kitchen in El Paso, and the wanting is the thread that connects him to me across four hundred miles and a military base and the particular silence of a boy becoming a man in a place his mother cannot reach.

I made posole this week — the white pozole, not the red, with pork and hominy and a clear broth that you top with shredded cabbage and radish and oregano and lime. White pozole is summer pozole — lighter than the red, brighter, the kind of soup that makes sense when it's a hundred and five outside and you need something warm that doesn't weigh you down. Rosa made white pozole in August, when the red would have been too heavy, and the instinct to match the soup to the season is Rosa's instinct, passed to me, practiced until it feels like my own.

The white pozole I made this week—Rosa’s instinct passed down to me—sent me back to the pantry to pull out hominy, that same swollen, earthy corn that anchors a bowl and makes it feel complete. This Hominy Beef Chili isn’t pozole, but it carries the same spirit: the hominy, the warmth, the sense that a bowl of something real can hold a family together even when one of them is four hundred miles away counting down the days to flour tortillas. It’s the kind of recipe I can make after a long shift in a hot bakery, feed whoever is home, and still feel like I gave them something that mattered.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (15 oz) white hominy, drained and rinsed
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes with green chiles
1 can (15 oz) pinto beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups low-sodium beef broth
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
Optional toppings: shredded cabbage, sliced radishes, lime wedges, dried oregano, sour cream

Instructions

Brown the beef. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add ground beef and cook, breaking it apart with a spoon, until no longer pink, about 6–8 minutes. Drain excess fat if needed.
Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion to the pot and cook until softened and translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more, stirring so it doesn’t burn.
Build the base. Stir in the chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, and oregano, letting the spices bloom in the fat for about 30 seconds.
Add the liquids and solids. Pour in the diced tomatoes with green chiles, beef broth, pinto beans, and hominy. Stir everything together and bring to a boil.
Simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover partially, and simmer for 25–30 minutes, allowing the flavors to meld and the broth to deepen slightly. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and finish with your preferred toppings—shredded cabbage and a squeeze of lime bring this closest to the spirit of a summer pozole.

Nutrition (per serving)

Hominy Beef Chili — The Hominy That Brought Summer Pozole to Mind