PUCHERO—A ONE-POT MEAL

Puchero, a meal-in-a-pot. The soup is served first, with rice, a few chickpeas and carrots, followed by platters of boiled meats--chicken, beef, pork, salt pork, sausages, vegetables and chickpeas. Pumpkin sauce is a tangy condiment. 

Puchero is almost the same as cocido, the grand one-pot meal especially famous in Madrid. Every region of Spain has its version of "boiled dinner." Puchero is the one I learned to make in the Andalusian village where I live. 

Back then, puchero was an everyday meal. It consisted of a big pot of boiled meats, fat, bones, sausages plus chickpeas, vegetables and potatoes. From the pot came, first, a bowl of soup broth with rice or thin noodles and, to follow, a platter of meat, sausage and fatty bits with the vegetables and potatoes. It was an inexpensive meal to feed a family.

Puchero is served for the midday comida (2 pm), never at night. Nowadays, when families no longer take a long midday break—working mothers, businesses that stay open all day, school cafeterias, have changed the routine—the traditional puchero tends to be reserved for Sundays instead of everyday.

The frugal housewife usually uses the olla exprés—pressure cooker—to reduce cooking time. That makes puchero the perfect meal for today’s Instant Pot. Usually it is made in quantity. Leftover broth can be turned into a different soup for another meal. The chickpeas get recycled in salads. The scraps of meat and sausage—called pringá—go into hash, croquettes or are spread on toasted buns, called molletes. Feel free to add more or less of any ingredient.

Ingredients for a puchero, clockwise from upper left, chorizo, hueso de caña (beef marrow bone), espinazo (fresh pork spine bone), morcilla (blood sausage), morcillo (beef shin), tocino (salt pork fat), and punta de jamón (serrano ham bone). 

Glossary of puchero/cocido ingredients:
Añejo (well-cured, aged, ham bone)
Costillas (fresh or salted pork ribs)
Chorizo (pimentón red pork sausage)
Espinazo (fresh or salted pork spine)
Gallina (stewing hen) or pollo (chicken)
Garbanzos (chickpeas)
Hueso de caña (marrow bone)
Morcillo (beef shin meat, boneless)
Morcilla (blood sausage, black pudding)
Panceta (pancetta, fresh or salted pork belly)
Punta de jamón or hueso de jamón (chunk of serrano ham bone)
Tocino salado, tocino fresco (salt pork; fresh fatback)

The serrano ham bone, a piece of only 2 or 3 inches, gives a defining flavor to the soup, an appetizing, umami, subtly rancid taste. A sprig of fresh mint, added to the hot soup immediately before serving, is a sublime final touch.

Puchero is best made with chickpeas cooked from scratch, not from a can. So put them to soak 8 hours before cooking. If your tap water is especially hard, add a pinch of baking soda to the soaking water (or use bottled water). Bring the water to a boil before adding the chickpeas.

Serve the broth as a primer plato--first course--with a few chickpeas, carrots and rice or soup noodles. The sprig of fresh mint is essential with this broth.

After the soup, serve the boiled chicken, beef, fatty bits and sausages, all cut up, with the vegetables and chickpeas.

Carrots, turnip and potatoes cooked in the savory broth can be embellished with coarse salt, freshly ground black pepper and savory pumpkin sauce.

Serve chickpeas with the vegetables or save them for another meal.

After the soup, a plate of meat, sausages, chickpeas and vegetables with tangy pumpkin sauce. Bread is an essential accompaniment.

Mix the pumpkin sauce into the chickpeas and vegetables.

Puchero is a “white” soup. If chorizo and morcilla sausages are to be included in the meal, they are cooked separately, so that the red pimentón in their spicing doesn’t color the broth.

The broth typically is served with thin vermicelli noodles (fideos), rice or thinly sliced bread in it. It usually has a few chickpeas and slices of carrots.

Tangy pumpkin sauce as condiment.

In my pueblo, puchero was always served in its purest form, with little embellishment (sometimes green onions to be munched on alongside the puchero). But elsewhere in Andalusia I have discovered an easy salsa de calabaza—pumpkin sauce—served as a condiment. Mixed with the boiled meats and vegetables, it adds tang.

Everyday Soup Pot, Andalusian Style
Puchero Andaluz

Serves 4-6 with leftover broth and chickpeas.

½ pound raw chickpeas, soaked overnight in water

16 cups water plus additional to cook sausages
½ chicken or stewing hen (about 1 ½ pounds)
6 ounces boneless beef shin
6 ounces fresh or salted pork ribs or spine bone
2 ounces salt pork or pancetta
4 ounces ham bone
Beef marrow bone
1 leek, white part only
4 large carrots, peeled
1 turnip, peeled
1 stalk celery
4-5 medium potatoes, peeled
Salt, as needed
1 cup medium-short grain rice

2-3 links soft cooking chorizo (8 ounces)
6 ounces morcilla (blood sausage)

For the pumpkin sauce:
8 ounces pumpkin or squash
1 clove garlic
¼ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
Pimentón (paprika)

To serve
Sprigs of fresh mint to serve with soup
Sprigs of parsley to garnish meat platter
Bread to accompany the puchero

The night before cooking the puchero, put the chickpeas to soak in water to cover. Soak them at least 8 hours. (If tap water is very hard, use a pinch of baking soda in the soaking water.) Drain the chickpeas.

Skim off the foam that rises.

Place the chicken, meat, fat and bones in a large bowl. Wash them in two or three changes of cold water. Drain and place them in a very large soup pot. Add 16 cups of water. Bring the water to a boil. Use a skimmer or ladle to skim off and discard the foam that rises to the top. 

Add the soaked and drained chickpeas, the leek, carrots, turnip and celery. When the liquid again comes to a boil, skim once again. Cover the pot and lower the heat so the soup bubbles gently. Cook 1 hour.

Remove chicken and reserve it (unless you are using gallina, boiling hen, which needs longer cooking). Add the potatoes to the pot. Taste the broth and add salt to taste (about 1 ½ teaspoons). Bring again to a boil, lower heat, cover and cook until chickpeas and beef are completely tender, 40-60 minutes more.

During the last 30 minutes that the puchero is cooking, Place the chorizo and morcilla sausages in a pan, cover with water and cook them 20 minutes. If preparing the pumpkin sauce, cook the pumpkin in the water with the sausages. Keep the sausages hot.

Blend pumpkin for sauce.

For the pumpkin sauce: Skim out the pumpkin. Remove peel and cut it into chunks in a mini food processor or blender. Add a quarter of a cooked potato from the big puchero pot, the garlic, cumin and salt. Add the oil and vinegar and blend to make a smooth sauce. Thin the sauce with 1 or 2 tablespoons of broth from the pot. Place in a sauce bowl and sprinkle with pimentón.

Remove the bones, meat, fat and vegetables from the puchero pot. Place the vegetables in a bowl or on a platter. Skim out the chickpeas and place them in a bowl. (Some chickpeas can stay in the soup.)

Remove congealed fat.

(If the puchero is to be served the following day, place the vegetables and meats in a covered container with a little of the broth and refrigerate. Pour the broth  through a colander, discarding any stringy bits of leeks or celery. Refrigerate the soup overnight. The following day, skim off and discard the fat that has congealed on top of the soup. Reheat all of the ingredients. Cook the rice in the broth.)

Discard the bones. Cut the meat, pork fat and reserved chicken into pieces. Cut the chorizo and morcilla into chunks and add to the platter. Keep warm.

Remove broth that is not going to be used for soup and save for another use. Leave about 1 ¼ cups of broth per person in the soup pot. Slice one of the carrots and add to the soup with a ladle of the chickpeas (allow about ¼ cup chickpeas per person).Bring again to a boil and add the rice. Lower heat, cover the pot and cook until rice is just barely cooked, 10 minutes. 

Ladle the broth with rice, carrots and chickpeas into wide, shallow soup bowls. Garnish each with a sprig of mint. Serve the soup.

Garnish the platter of meats with parsley. Serve it with the bowl of vegetables, chickpeas and pumpkin sauce.

Recipes for puchero leftovers:

Leftover Cocido Hash (Ropa Vieja).

Sandwich of Puchero Leftovers (Montadito de Pringá).

Broth with Garnishes (Sopa de Picadillo).

Chickpea Puree with Croutons.

Garlic Soup.

Andalusian Garlic Soup (Maimones).

Savory Almond Soup.

Other versions of cocido:

Madrid Style Boiled Dinner (Cocido Madrileño)