Robin: If you’re even just a little bit interested in authentic Mexican food, you’ve probably heard of mole or mole sauce. (I’ll use those terms interchangeably here.) You may even have ordered it at a Mexican restaurant at some point—unless you were put off by the unappetizing appearance of a dark-colored mole and still haven’t tried it. (Don’t feel bad; mole is notoriously un-photogenic.)
On the other hand, maybe you have eaten it on several occasions now and would like to take the next step and make it at home, but you are too intimidated by the typical labor-intensive recipes that call for 20-30 ingredients, several of which you had never heard of before. Believe me, I have been there!
Whatever your current position on mole, allow me to introduce you to this Mexican delicacy in a way that I hope will leave you encouraged to explore it further. Bear with me through a little theory and history, and then I’ll show you how you can enjoy mole at home without tears of frustration.
What is mole sauce and what is it made from?
Mole (pronounced MOH-leh) is a traditional Mexican cooking sauce. It is most often used as a sauce for chicken, turkey, or pork (either alone or combined with vegetables such as squash), but is also occasionally used in other concoctions such as romeritos or revoltijo, a holiday herb and shrimp dish.
There are many types of mole, the most famous being, perhaps, mole poblano from the state of Puebla and mole negro from Oaxaca, but most of them include some combination of dried (occasionally fresh) chile peppers, spices, herbs, toasted bread or corn tortillas, seeds or nuts, lard, and perhaps a small amount of bitter chocolate, among other elements.
Aside from these very dark-colored moles, there are green moles, “red” or “yellow” moles (often light brown or rust-colored), and even sauces bearing other names (such as chichilo or manchamanteles) that belong to the mole family. Each region, state, town, or even cook has his/her/its favorite variety.
A classic mole recipe can easily call for 40 ingredients, and these are toasted and ground separately before being combined into a sauce, so there are many laborious steps involved in its making. Traditionally, several women, either from the same community or the same family, work together to prepare the mole when it is made at home.
What does mole sauce taste like?
As a mixture of many strong-natured ingredients, mole is definitely a robustly- flavored sauce. It’s earthy, rustic-tasting, and spicy in the sense of cumin-cinnamon-garlic as well as in heat. In these ways it resembles Indian curries, though only in concept and not in actual flavors.
A mole’s piquancy will vary according to the types and number of chile peppers used, but it is generally at least moderately “hot.” For many, such an assertive sauce will take some getting used to, and that is okay—even Mexican children aren’t born eating mole or any other piquant or strongly-flavored dish!
Mole’s flavor is often described as complex, and it is that—extremely so. None of its many ingredients takes precedence over the other, but each one “speaks,” so the flavor of each individual element comes through simultaneously. Though some varieties contain chocolate, mole is far from being a “chocolate sauce,” as it has been erroneously described elsewhere. The chocolate used is bitter, and is definitely not intended to give the dish a dessert-like nature but rather to balance flavors and textures with the spicy, sweet, acidic, herby, and other ingredients.
Once you become comfortable with the overall concept of this delectable sauce and are able to enjoy eating it, it can be fun to “roll” a bite of mole around on one’s tongue in order to try to identify as many of the individual ingredients as possible.
What is mole de olla?
Aside from its name, mole de olla it has little relationship to the mole sauce we are discussing in this article. Mole de olla is another delicious, authentic, comfort-foody Mexican dish. Depending on how much liquid it contains, it can be either a very chunky soup or a stew. It general contains chunks of beef and vegetables such as squash, carrots, potatoes, green beans, and chayotes, and the flavorful broth is made from dried chile peppers. Sound good? It truly is! I’ll post my recipe for it soon.
A (Very) Brief History of Mole
The term mole comes from the Náhuatl term mulli, which means basically sauce or concoction. (Náhuatl was the language used by the Aztecs, and varieties of it are still widely spoken by indigenous peoples in Mexico.) Mole existed in pre-Hispanic times, though not in the form we know today, for many of the ingredients common in present-day moles originated in Europe, Africa, or Asia and were brought to Mexican soil by overseas traders.
During Mexican Colonial times (1500s to 1800s), many different types of mole sauces were created and developed by countless nameless cooks. Variations reflected the ingredients available in different towns and regions of the country as well as the culinary preferences dominant in each. Legends sprang up to explain the origin of some of the famous sauces such as mole poblano, but, as usually happens with traditional national dishes, there is no one person with which to identify the origin of any variety of mole.
What is mole’s place in the grand scheme of Mexican cuisine?
Mole has often been called Mexico’s “national dish.” While there are other viable contenders for that title (tacos, for example, or stuffed chiles), mole certainly has earned the designation. The amalgamation into one sauce of so many ingredients native to Mexico with those which were brought from elsewhere and “naturalized” into what we now consider traditional Mexican cuisine is, in a way, a metaphor for the history of the country itself.
Mole is, above all, a celebration food. It is so often served at weddings that the expression voy a un mole (I’m going to a mole) brings to mind that occasion. It is also commonly served at the quinceañera parties offered upon a girl’s turning 15 years old, Day of the Dead festivities, Christmas, and Mexican Independence Day (celebrated in mid-September), as well as on private family occasions. That’s not to say that you will never find mole being served on any given Tuesday, but mole’s time-consuming, labor-intensive preparation just makes it a logical candidate for production of large quantities at a time with the participation of several different people (usually women) in the effort.
You definitely do not necessarily have to be celebrating anything in order to enjoy mole, though, and you don’t need to be Mexican at all. You just have to like tasty, complexly-flavored food and be willing to try something very different.
Ready to get started? Proceed to Preparing Mole 101
*Complete photo credits:
Black mole: (c) Dale Cruse on Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0 license, no modifications made
All other images on this page are (c) Robin Grose
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