Mole negro
Oaxaca's black mole: chilhuacle and other dried chillies toasted almost to char, ground with nuts, seeds, fruit, spice and chocolate into a near-black sauce.
What makes it mole negro
- Dark dried chillies, toasted until nearly black, with their seeds.
- Nuts, sesame, plantain, raisins, tomato and tomatillo, each fried and ground.
- Oaxacan chocolate, and a sauce fried down in lard until it's glossy and near black.
Where it comes from
Oaxaca is often called the land of the seven moles, and negro is the one people travel for. Its colour comes from the chillies — chilhuacle negro, grown in the Cañada region and hard to find even in Mexico, often eked out with mulato or pasilla — and from toasting them, and sometimes their seeds, right to the edge of burnt.
It's the mole of weddings, funerals and the Days of the Dead, made in quantity and over days. Many Oaxacan cooks now make a paste to keep, loosened with stock when it's needed.
How it varies
- Mole coloradito
- Another of the seven: redder, sweeter, built on ancho.
- Tamales de mole negro
- The sauce folded into masa, wrapped in banana leaf.
Be the first here
Start your own mole negroNo one here has made mole negro yet. Start it as v1, and every version after is an experiment the next cook can learn from.
Near it
MexicanMole poblanoA dark, complex sauce of several dried chillies, nuts, seeds, spices and a little chocolate, served over turkey or chicken.No one here has made it yet
MexicanTamalesMasa beaten with lard and stock, spread on a corn husk or banana leaf around a filling, folded and steamed.No one here has made it yet