Flavorful Mexican soup with pork and poblano peppers.

Sopa Poblana

By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

This month for the #SoupSwappers blogging group, the theme is on Mexican soups. For the recipe I am sharing, I chose Sopa  Poblana, which is a Puebla-Style soup with pork and peppers. I adapted it from an older cookbook of mine, Authentic Mexican Cookiing, by Betty Blue, which uses basic ingredients and not much seasoning, and only bell peppers instead of poblanos. Puebla style means it is a regional recipe from the Puebla area of central Mexico, and not anything to do with poblanos or anything like that.

For the pork, I used leftovers from my PORK CARNITAS that I posted last week. While that pork I fry up crispy just before serving, in this I just left it as soft roasted pork without the crisping up. I added the poblanos (one of my favorite peppers!) and since those can vary wildly as to how hot and spicy they are, did not put any hot peppers in the soup. As it turns out, my peppers were on the very mild end of things, barely spicier than a bell pepper (which isn’t spicy at all) and I decided to make the spicing be the jalapenos as a garnish. But normally I would add some jalapeno to the soup to heat things up a bit. If you choose to do so, be careful how spicy your peppers are by giving them a taste raw.

I also would use Mexican oregano in this, but as it turns out I was out. So I just used regular oregano, which is fine. But if you have the Mexican type, use it. And I felt a little cumin did do a lot to bring out the flavors. The corn I was going to cut off cob corn, but managed to forget to buy that as well, and at the last minute, had to settle for some frozen corn since the fresh corn at the nearby market looked pretty….not fresh.  But especially in summer, feel free to slice the kernels straight off of fresh corn and use the same cooking time.

I’ve listed some optional toppings. I do think the soup will taste best with a little sour cream or crema. Probably better to add it as a garnish rather than stirring it in as you might with something like beef stroganoff. I didn’t use any cheese as a topping,  but crumbled cotija cheese would be fantastic as well.

The pork in this, being very tender to start, did not keep it’s cubed shape but shreds, as beef in ropa vieja might. If you use a firmer cooked pork or something like pork chops, that should keep the shape. If you don’t have any carnitas handy, you could cook some pork steaks or country style ribs to get the desired amount of meat since that is the same cut of pork overall, just sliced.

I hope you enjoy and join me tomorrow as I share a recipe inspired by celebrity chef Daniel Bouloud for Omelette Farcie, which means that the omelette is stuffed.  With what, you ask? Tune in tomorrow to see. Until then-

~Sue

#SoupSwappers

Mexican Soup, Caldo & Sopa

Hosted by Karen’s Kitchen Stories

Be sure to check out the other Soup Saturday Swappers Bloggers this month!

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