Mole Poblano de Pollo
Toasted dried chiles, seeds, nuts, and a little chocolate build a thick savory-sweet sauce that coats poached chicken in a streamlined Puebla-style method.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Season the chicken with 10 g salt. Place it in a pot with 1 L stock. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, and cook for 25 minutes until the chicken is just cooked through and still firm. Lift out the chicken and reserve 750 ml cooking broth.
- Toast the ancho, mulato, and pasilla chiles in a dry skillet over medium heat for 10 to 15 seconds per side. Don’t let them blacken. Transfer them to a bowl, cover with hot broth, and soak for 15 minutes until fully softened.
- Toast the sesame seeds, almonds, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, and raisins in the same skillet for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring often. Remove once the seeds smell nutty and the raisins swell slightly.
- Heat the oil in the skillet. Cook the onion, garlic, tomato, and tomatillos for 8 minutes until softened and lightly browned. Add the bread and tortilla and cook 1 minute more.
- Blend the softened chiles, toasted seed mixture, cooked vegetables, Mexican chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, anise seed, sugar, remaining 10 g salt, and 500 ml reserved broth until very smooth. Add a little more broth only if the blender needs help moving.
- Pour the sauce into a wide pot over medium-low heat. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring often, until it thickens enough to coat a spoon and the surface turns glossy. Add more reserved broth in small amounts if it gets pasty.
- Return the chicken to the pot. Turn the pieces gently to coat them without tearing the skin. Simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce clings to the chicken and the flavors settle.
- Rest the dish for 5 minutes. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and finish with a light sprinkle of extra sesame seeds if you like.
Cultural Context
Mole poblano is closely tied to Puebla and is one of Mexico’s best-known moles. The sauce belongs to a wider tradition built around dried chiles, seeds, spices and slow cooking, with plenty of regional and family variations. Some versions use more chocolate, nuts, bread or fruit than others. That flexibility is part of the dish. The key is the technique: toast, soak, grind and slowly cook the sauce until the flavors deepen into something rich, dark and beautifully layered.
Fun Fact
In Puebla, mole poblano often appears during major celebrations such as weddings, baptisms, and national holidays. Traditional cooks prepare the sauce in large batches that can take hours to grind and simmer, sometimes using more than twenty ingredients layered through multiple stages of toasting, soaking, blending, and slow cooking.
Cook’s Tip
Mulato can be replaced with more ancho if needed, but the sauce will taste less round and less dark. Use all thighs or a mix of thighs and drumsticks. Keep the chocolate modest; mole poblano should taste layered, not dessert-sweet. Some traditional versions add plantain, extra spices, or more nuts, but this home version keeps the core Puebla-style structure while shortening the process.
Trivia
Many traditional mole poblano recipes contain 20–30 ingredients, including several dried chiles, seeds, spices, nuts, and a small amount of chocolate, making it one of Mexico’s most complex classic sauces.
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