Menudo, Pozole, and even Navajo Stew, should be made by starting out with dried corn in my opinion. Dried corn take hours to cook so a lot of people substitute canned homoney which reduces the cooking time. If you don't start off with dried corn or "nixtamal", you have two strikes against you no matter how hard you work on the other flavorings. If you want to know about good Menudo and Pozole and why dry corn is necessary, you need to read Diane Kennedy's "The Art of Mexican Cooking"
Diane doesn't state it, but good menudo is like good sex, substituting or shortcutting just isn't the same. I hate TexMex and for some reason it's hard to find any kind of Mexican soup in Texas. Thus the first thing I do after leaving Texas and crossing into New Mexico, is try to fill up on a big bowl of menudo.
I was delighted to find the "MENUDO Restaurant" in Deming. With a name like, that I expected Big Things. What I got though was big, but it was a Big Let Down. They short-cutted my soup with canned homoney. I should have asked first, which would have prevented a big disapointment. My advice is either the the owners change the name of their restaurant, or use dried corn and take the time to make real pozole. read more
