Make Ahead
Chicken Mole
- Serves 4
Author Notes
Making mole can be a long and often frustrating journey. It often takes several different specialty food stores, a few days, and the criticism that it doesn’t taste the same the diner’s abuela, or mother, or that restaurant in that tiny pueblo two hours away from the city. But one has to shoot for the stars right? So, here it is: after passing even the most stuck up mole snobs, this recipe proves to be a hit for a weeknight dinner. This mole is easy, is on the table in about an hour, and hits the same notes as your favorite mole. —mpittsm
What You'll Need
Ingredients
-
4-6
boneless, skinless chicken breasts
-
5
dried pasilla chiles
-
3
garlic cloves, roughly chopped
-
2
toasted tortillas, torn into pieces
-
1 pinch
ground cloves
-
1
onion, roughly chopped
-
1 teaspoon
teaspoon dried oregano
-
2 tablespoons
smooth peanut butter
-
4 teaspoons
teaspoons powdered chicken bouillon (recommended: Maggi or Knorr)
-
1/4 cup
cup pepitas
-
3 tablespoons
sesame seeds
-
3 tablespoons
tablespoons canola oil
-
3 tablespoons
olive oil (for the chicken)
-
1 1/2
tablets of Mexican chocolate (90 grams each), recommended Ibarra or Abuelita, roughly chopped
Directions
- Preheat the oven at 375F. On a baking sheet, season the chicken with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Bake the chicken for 25 minutes, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the chicken reads 165F. Set aside.
- While the chicken is baking, fill a medium size pot with water and bring to a boil. Add the pasilla chiles and turn of the heat. Soak the chiles for 30 minutes.
- While the chiles are soaking, in a dry skillet toast the sesame seeds and pepitas. Set aside to cool.
- In a dutch oven or large pot, add the canola oil and heat on medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant (1 minute).
- After the chiles have soaked and are softened, cut off the stems off all of them and take the seeds out of 2 of the chiles. If you do not like your mole spicy then remove seeds from all the chiles. Do NOT toss the water they were soaking in.
- Transfer the onion and garlic mixture to a blender. Add the peanut butter, tortillas, cooled sesame and pepitas, oregano, chiles, powdered stock, cloves, 2 cups of the water used to soak the chiles and puree until smooth. Add one more cup and keep processing. Ojo: because of the pepitas and chile seeds it make take a little more water to process the mixture until smooth.
- Bring the puree from the blender to the dutch oven or pot where you cooked the onion. Bring the mixture to medium heat and turn down and let simmer for 20 minutes. Add the chocolate and continue cooking until the chocolate has melted. Taste the mole and season with salt and pepper to your taste. If the sauce is too thick add more of the chile water.
- Add the chicken breasts to the mixture and simmer another 5 minutes.
- Serve with classic white rice (or yellow rice) and with tortillas.
See what other Food52ers are saying.