What Pozole means
Pozole is a Mexican soup or stew name of Nahuatl origin meaning "foamy maize stew". It comes from pozolli (foamy thing, from tlapozonalli, boiled or frothed). It is pronounced poh-SOH-leh, and it is most associated with Jalisco.
The name is traced to potzolli, foamy, for the way nixtamalized kernels burst open. Sahagún records maize stew at the feast of Xipe Tótec, where the ruler was served a portion containing the flesh of a sacrificed captive; that account is documented, not folklore.
Pozole is one of the many Mexican food words formed in Nahuatl. Spanish borrowed it, and in several cases English borrowed it again from Spanish. See how Nahuatl builds words and the full list of Mexican food names.
This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: Pozole, menudo, birria, caldo. Mexican soup names are blunt and descriptive: menudo means "the small things", the offal that goes in it, and pozole comes from a Nahuatl word for foam, describing how the hominy blooms open as it cooks.
