MOLE SAUCE

Mole Sauce image

Categories Chocolate Fruit Nut Pepper Sauce Dinner Fry Stew

Number Of Ingredients 25

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Ingredients

2 cups Chicken Broth
4 Medium Tomatoes (quartered)
1 Onion (peeled and quartered)
4 Dried Anchos Chiles
4 Dried New Mexican Chiles
4 Dried Guajillo Chiles
3 Dried Arbol Chiles (exclude if you want less spice)
1/2 can Chipotle Chiles in the sauce
1.5 tablespoons Sesame Seeds
2 tablespoon Reserved seeds from dried chiles.
2 Star Anise pods
2 Bay Leaves
1 teaspoon Black Peppercorn
1 teaspoon Cumin Seeds
1/2 teaspoon Cloves
1 Cinnamon Stick (broken into small pieces)
1 teaspoon Dried Thyme
1 teaspoon Mexican Oregano
1 cup Mixed Nuts (or just peanuts)
1/3 cup Raisins
2 Slices of Bread cut into cubes (or 5 tortillas)
1 cup Mexican Chocolate finely chopped (see notes below)
6 - 8 cloves Garlic (peeled and crushed)
2 cups Canola Oil for frying
1 teaspoon Salt

Steps:

1. Deseed all dry chiles and reserve 2 tablespoons of seeds (more if you want it spicer), then chop the chiles into 1 inch pieces roughly. Just enough to help avoid trapping oil in them during frying.
2. In a small pan toast reserved seeds along with, sesame seeds, star anise, bay leaves, peppercorns, cumin seeds, cloves and cinnamon until fragrant (about 2 to 3 minutes).
3. Add toasted seeds along with the dried thyme and Mexican oregano to a spice grinder and crush into a fine blend. The more crushed and fine, the better.
4. In a separate pan heat up your oil for frying to 350 degrees.
5. Set aside mixing bowl lined with paper towels to absorb oil from frying.
6. Fry all dried chiles for 2 minutes, add to bowl.
7. Fry nuts and raisins for 2 minutes, add to bowl.
8. Fry bread till golden brown, add to bowl.
9. Fry garlic and onions for 2 minutes, add to bowl.
10. Lastly, fry tomatoes till they blister, about 1 minute, add to bowl.
11. Dry off excess oil as best you can, then mix in chipotles with their sauce and the ground spices.
12. Take mixture and add half to a blender, blend with 1 cup of broth. You will repeat this process with the other half of the mix, the reason to do it in halves is because it's normally too much for one blender. I transfer the first half to another bowl while I work on the second half. The end result should be to aim for a fine puree. The finer, the better.
13. Using a fine mesh strainer and a dutch oven (or large pot), strain the puree through the mesh into the dutch oven. You want the Mole to be as smooth as possible, so this helps remove all the larger chunks and pieces from the mix. I often will reserve the discarded pieces the wouldn't fit through the stainer and run them through the blender again with a little more broth, trying to extract as much a possible from the mix.
14. Once the sauce is strained, heat on medium heat, add chocolate, salt to taste and allow to thicken for 10 to 15 minutes.
15. Reduce heat to low and allow to cook for 1 hour to develop the sauce while stirring occasionally
16. Enjoy