Mole

Mole is a traditional Mexican sauce, usually made with different chili peppers and many other spices which all give mole its amazing flavour. I love it.

I have been intimidated to make mole for a very long time.  Mostly because it was a completely new subject to me, I was not familiar with preparing anything like mole. Even a Mexican person will tell you how complicated it is to make it.

Then one day I met someone who actually had made mole from scratch.  And I was told that as long as you can find all different chili peppers (quite difficult when not living in Mexico) it is not hard at all. But that it does take time to make it.
So I gave it a shot. And I am glad I did.

So I am reconfirming, it is not hard at all. It just takes time, you will need about good 3 hours. I usually roast and fry all the ingredients the night before and the next day I puree and cook. 

I use this recipe. The things I have changed from the original recipe are:

• I roast chili peppers and tortilla in a dry cast iron skillet, no oil.

• For frying the rest of the ingredients I use grape-seed oil and a bit less than a half a cup.

• I do not use the extra sugar as Mexican chocolate gives enough sweetness.

• I cook mole until is quite thick (see picture) because most of it goes to the freezer. The recipe really gives a lot and it works excellent to freeze it. When you are ready to have it just put it in the fridge the night before and then add to some hot chicken stock.

Now back to the chili peppers. In Mexico there is a huge variety of dried chili peppers and when they are dried they get a completely new name. For example chili chipotle is a dried version of a fresh jalapeño chili.

Here you can see all four chili peppers used in the recipe, from the left: mulato, ancho, pasilla and chipotle meco.