Receta de mole poblano

Growing up, I loved, loved el mole poblano que mi mamá nos hacia using Doña Maria’s bottle of mole paste, pero I’d avoided making it from scratch because I knew it used a ton of ingredients. This past weekend, my partner and I compramos todos los ingredientes de la tienda Tlaxcala en New Haven. Y el mole was orders of magnitude more layered, textured and delicious que Doña Maria’s paste. The most difficult part of the recipe was finding a place in New England, the land of few Mexicans, to source all the ingredients from.

Serving Size

This made 3 blender’s worth of mole (consistency of heavy, heavy cream). We only used about two or three cups for the amount of chicken we had.

Tools

Blender, molcajete, knives, cutting board.

Ingredients

• 3 libras de pollo (dos piernas and una pechuga)
• Sal
• 1 tableta de Chocolate Abuelita
• 1 cebolla blanca grande
• 1 whole garlic bunch
• 12 chipotles secos
• 6 chiles pasillos secos
• 6 chiles anchos secos
• 2 tortillas de maiz
• 12 pasas grandes
• 3 handfuls de pepitas
• 3 handfuls de cacahuates
• 4 handfuls de ajonjolí
• 1 palo de canela
• 1 pinch of anise seeds
• Medio paquete de galletas Maria
• 1 platano macho
• 3 tomates

Instructions

1. Hierve el pollo: ~Boil one gallon of water and a few teaspoons of salt (surprisingly, this is the only salt you need for the mole) with the white onion and cloves of one whole garlic until chicken reaches 165 F. Remove the chicken and then continue to reduce broth for about 30 min while prepping other items. Reserve broth and veggies for later.
2. Devein and deseed the peppers.
3. Tuesta los chiles, nueces, y literally everything else: Toast chiles in oil until fragrant, approximately two minutes or so for each type of chile. Toast the raisins, pepitas, anise, sesame seeds, galletas Maria, plantains, tomatoes, tortillas, cinnamon, cachuates, Toast the tortillas hasta que sean tostadas. Don’t toast the chocolate. (Note: make sure to not overtoast or burn the chiles)
4. Use 7 cups of the chicken broth (con la cebolla y ajo) to soak all toasted ingredients, except sesame seeds, pepitas, canela, and peanuts. Also add the Chocolate Abuelita. Boil for about 10 minutes.
5. In the meantime, crush the sesame seeds, pepitas, canela, and peanuts in molcajete until fine. Then add to the broth.
6. Once everything is soft, blend until smooth.
7. Finally, thin out the mole with the remaining chicken broth until the texture is slightly more viscous than heavy cream.
8. Place chicken in broth and serve with rice and tortilla