I don't want to lose my job, so think of your own joke
Mole negro is a sauce that takes days and pays you back for weeks, because it freezes beautifully. Day one is stock and shopping, day two is toasting and blending, and day three it tastes even better. The trick is toasting each thing on its own until it's dark but never burnt.
The challenge
- Sourcing 30+ specialty ingredients
- Toasting each ingredient separately
- Balancing chocolate and chiles
- Multi-day preparation timeline
Oaxacan mole that requires over 30 ingredients and the kind of commitment most people don't even reserve for relationships. Traditionally, everything gets ground on a metate (volcanic stone grinder) into a paste, which is hours of arm-destroying labor that modern blenders can approximate but never quite replicate.
The paste simmers with stock and Mexican chocolate for hours, developing layers of flavor that range from smoky to sweet to bitter to spicy, all at once. After days of work, you're left with an almost-black sauce that tastes like nothing else on earth - assuming you didn't burn something in hour two and have to start over.
Prep: 3 hours Β Β·Β Cook: 4 hours (over 2 days)
Ingredients
For the chiles
- 6 chilhuacle negro chiles (or extra mulatos if unavailable)
- 6 mulato chiles and 6 pasilla chiles
- 4 guajillo chiles
- 2 chipotle mora chiles
Toasted and fried separately
- 4 tbsp lard or vegetable oil
- 1 onion, thickly sliced, 1 head garlic, cloves peeled, and 3 ripe tomatoes plus 4 tomatillos
- 50 g (1/3 cup) almonds, 50 g (1/3 cup) peanuts, 30 g (1/4 cup) pecans and 2 tbsp sesame seeds, plus extra sesame to garnish
- 40 g (1/4 cup) raisins and 1 ripe plantain, sliced
- 1 stale corn tortilla and 1 slice stale bread (or brioche)
- 1 cinnamon stick (Mexican canela), 4 cloves, 6 allspice berries, 10 black peppercorns, 1/2 tsp each cumin seeds, dried oregano, dried thyme and 2 avocado leaves (optional)
To finish
- 2.5 litres (10 cups) chicken stock (from simmering a whole chicken, which you serve with the mole)
- 90 g (3 oz) Mexican chocolate (such as Oaxacan tablet), chopped
- 1-2 tbsp sugar or grated piloncillo, and salt to taste
Method
- Day 1: make the stockSimmer a whole chicken (about 1.8 kg / 4 lb) with an onion, garlic and a bay leaf in 4 litres (16 cups) water for 1 hour 15 minutes. Lift out the chicken, cool and refrigerate. Strain the stock and keep 2.5 litres (10 cups).
- Clean and toast the chilesWipe the chiles, remove stems and seeds and keep the seeds. Toast the chiles a few at a time in a dry heavy pan over medium heat for 10-20 seconds per side until fragrant and slightly blistered. Pull them off the moment they smoke. Soak in 1 litre (4 cups) hot stock for 30 minutes.
- Char the seedsTraditionally the chile seeds are toasted until blackened. Toast 2 tbsp of the seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring, until very dark, then soak in cold water for 10 minutes and drain to remove harshness. This is where the black colour comes from, so open a window.
- Roast the vegetablesChar the onion, garlic, tomatoes and tomatillos in a dry pan or under a grill (broiler) until blackened in spots and soft, about 10-15 minutes.
- Fry each ingredient separatelyHeat the lard in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Fry each ingredient one at a time, removing it to a big bowl before starting the next: almonds and pecans (2-3 minutes), peanuts (2 minutes), sesame (1 minute, until golden), raisins (until puffed, 30 seconds), plantain (until deep brown, 4 minutes), tortilla and bread (until crisp and very dark brown). Toast the whole spices and herbs in a dry pan for 1 minute.
- Blend in batchesBlend the soaked chiles and their stock until completely smooth. Separately blend the fried nuts, seeds, fruit, bread, spices and vegetables with enough stock to move the blades, in batches, for 2-3 minutes each. Pass both purΓ©es through a fine sieve, pressing hard.
- Fry the pasteHeat 2 tbsp lard in a large heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add the chile purΓ©e (careful, it spits) and fry, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes until darkened and thick. Add the nut-spice purΓ©e and cook for another 15 minutes, scraping the bottom so nothing catches.
- Simmer with chocolateAdd the chocolate and gradually stir in the remaining stock until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Simmer on low for 1 1/2-2 hours, stirring every 10 minutes, until glossy and almost black.
- Balance and restSeason with salt and the sugar a little at a time, tasting for a balance of smoky, bitter, sweet and spicy. Cool and refrigerate overnight; the flavours deepen dramatically.
- Day 3: serveReheat the mole gently, loosening with stock if needed. Warm the chicken pieces in the sauce for 10 minutes. Serve sprinkled with toasted sesame, with warm corn tortillas and white rice.
- Write your own jokeServe the mole with warm tortillas, rice and a well-earned beer. The card writer didn't want to lose their job, so the closing joke is up to you. Tell it at the table. If nobody laughs, the mole was still great.
Tips from the trenches
- Toast chiles in small batches and pull them early; one burnt chile makes the whole pot bitter.
- Use a big bowl for all the fried ingredients so you can tick them off as you go.
- Add chocolate and sugar gradually and taste; the chiles should lead, the chocolate should just round them out.
- Make a double batch and freeze the extra paste in portions; future you will be thrilled.
βOne of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.ββ Luciano Pavarotti
