#Dave's Hallucinogenic Molé sauce
Molé sauce is an amazingly complex concoction. If you're going to make this, I suggest starting the way I did - learning the tastes from several different restaurants, then researching online various recipes, regional differences, and so on. Molé is kind-of the Mexican version of 'curry', in that there's no one recipe, no one common set of ingredients, but it typically consists of a thick spicy sauce based on regionally available spices and served with a stewed meat, typically over rice and/or with tortillas.
Calling a molé a 'sauce' is a bit of a simplification. Most of the time, I wouldn't want a true sauce to be this heavy, and completely dominate a dish. This is more like a 'spice and chili pepper stew'.
This recipe is probably best identified as a molé Poblano, but its not tracable to any one specific recipe. I took many different recipes, studied the ratios of various ingredients, made substitutions I thought appropriate (using honey when several recipes called for white sugar, for example - I thought honey was another dimension of flavor and possibly more authentic).
Molés typically have dozens of ingredients, with no single ingredient dominating the flavor. People tend to get hung up on the fact that it contains chocolate, as if its going to be some overly sweet chocolate sauce over meat; thats not the case at all. The way its used in this recipe, chocolate is just another roasted seed. Let me remind you that pumpernickel bread is simply rye bread with cocoa in it, but no one freaks out over that.
In order to really understand the complexity of the molé, you have to understand the Maillard reaction.
This is basically the chemical reaction that occurs in food as it is damaged by heat. I'm not talking burnt, more like roasted/toasted. The Maillard reaction is what happens when you:
- make toast
- burn sugar to make candy and caramel
- brown onions
- roast coffee
- cook a hamburger on a hot grill
Is your mouth watering yet? All of these things contain natural proteins and sugars which we torture with heat to develop flavor. Consider yourself as having mastered the maillard reaction when you can take a cup of white sugar and a cup of heavy cream and can make a caramel sauce you'd put over vanilla ice cream. (Technically, caramelization is a different chemical process than the Maillard reaction, but from the point of view of the home kitchen, both are the same thing - heat + food = yummy color. Precise control over that heat lets you develop flavor without crossing into 'burnt').
Water prevents the Maillard reaction, which is why when you brown an onion in a little bit of oil, first you drive off that moisture as it turns translucent, then it starts to get brown. The water boils away at 212f, preventing the cooking process from getting hot enough to do the browning. We need temperatures more like those for candy-making. We need low moisture, oil, and almost a stir-fry technique for the caramelization we are going to do with this recipe.
Molés are all about cranking this reaction up to 11 for most of the ingredients in the recipe.
Before we get to the recipe, I want to talk about three important tools:
-
A Stick Blender We are going to have a lot of chunky ingredients... dried peppers, nuts, sesame seeds, etc. and we need a good way to pulverize this into a sauce. A stand up blender might work, but it would involve transferring hot liquids around, splashing, etc. A stick blender is the right tool for this job.
-
a cast iron, enamled, dutch oven That link is exactly the one I used, and it has become my second favorite kitchen tool. For this recipe in particular, the sustained heat of the cast iron combined with the way the fond develops on the enamel is amazing. Most of the flavor in this recipe develops when bits of food stick to the enamel, and then deglaze in a liquid with the help of the third tool.
-
a good wooden spoon. The bits of food that stick to the enamel (fond) will dissolve when we add liquid to the recipe. A good wooden spoon lets you scrape these bits off the enamel of the dutch oven without harming it.
###Pepper options
In doing research for the recipe, I wanted to find and use authentic chili peppers. Aleppo peppers are nice and flavorful, but given their origin in Turkey, they probably aren't very authentic. I'm also not going for extreme heat with the pepper selection. If you are, you can alter the chili pepper mix - nothing about this recipe is set in stone. Not all of these were used in the final version of the recipe - these are notes for your own continuing experimentation
- Ancho
- Arbol
- California (New Mexico)
- Casabel
- Chipotle
- Guajillo
- Pasilla Negro
- Piquin
- Scotch Bonnet
There are probably a dozen others, but thats the list culled from a few recipes that were authentic and easily available in the U.S. at Penzy's Spices and at my local hispanic market
###The Ingredients
####Group 0 - some liquids
- Water (I probably used 6 cups; given the cook time and evaporation, you'll need a lot too)
- Chicken Stock (if you make your own more power to you. I used 2 26 ounce boxes from Swanson)
- Vegetable Oil (oil is going to be necessary for some of the toasting/Maillard reaction... if you want to use something other than vegetable oil, its going to have to be something with a high smoking point, like Olive or Peanut.)
####Group 1 - the Chilis All of these chilis were dried and bagged; we'll rehydrate them later. The weights below are after removing the stems and seeds. You'll probably want to remove the seeds, as it gives you better control over the final heat of the dish.
- Ancho (2.5 ounces)
- Guajillo (2.5 ounces)
- Chipotle (1 ounce)
- California (1 ounce)
- Arbol (1 ounce)
- Pasilla Negro (1 ounce)
destem, seed, and coarsely chop this mixture, set aside.
####Group 2 - the dry whole spices
- Cumin Seed (whole seeds, 1 ounce)
- Whole Black Peppercorns (about 30)
- Whole Cloves (about 15)
- Sesame Seeds (1 ounce)
- Star Anise (4 pieces)
- Allspice (about 15)
- Bay Leaves (3)
- Chili Seeds reserved from your de-seeding of Group 1 (to taste)
####Group 3 - the Aromatics
- Onions (6 medium, diced)
- Garlic (1 bulb, about 9 cloves, chopped coarsely)
####Group 4 - Simmering
- Tomato puree (one 29 ounce can)
- Honey (1/2 cup)
- Mexican Oregano (leaf, 1/4 cup)
- Cinnamon (1/2 Teaspoon)
####Group 5 - Finishing the Sauce
- raisins (2 ounces)
- almonds (2 ounces)
- peanuts (2 ounces)
- Chocolate (Ibarra Mexican Chocolate is probably more authentic, but I don't like it. I used Chuao Honeycomb bar)
- Masa (about half a cup)
###The Process This is not quick... I think I spent 5 hours on the first version of this, and thats after I had most of the ingredients prepped.
- Heat your dutch oven with 1/4 cup of vegetable oil till a drop of water sizzles (around 300f over a medium burner). Add all the chilis from group 1 and toast for ~5 minutes, stirring as necessary to prevent burning. DO NOT stir constantly - you want some darkening here to develop the toasty flavors. (caution with the fumes - they will be painful thanks to the heat from the chili)
- Add all of the whole spices to the pot, and toast another few minutes, until the sesame seeds turn golden brown/auburn.
- remove everything from the dutch oven and set aside.
- Add another 2 tablespoons of oil, add the diced onion, and cook beyond translucent, into a deep golden brown.
- Add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds. Don't burn the garlic, or you'll ruin everything.
- Add back the chili pepper and spice mixture, stir to combine.
- Immediately add one box of the chicken stock and 2-4 cups of water; enough to ensure the peppers are covered and even slightly floating. bring to a boil, turn the heat down, cover, and let simmer for an hour. Check water level occasionally - you shouldn't lose much to evaporation with the lid on, but the peppers will rehydrate, soaking most of this up.
- When peppers are rehydrated, turn off heat and use stick blender to pureé into something the consistency of thin catsup. You're pureéing the whole seeds and spices too - so be thorough.
- add the rest of the simmering ingredients (group 4) and simmer for another hour, covered, stirring and checking often. Mastery of the dutch oven here is crucial - you need to keep the heat low, but constant, without scorching the developing sauce. Adding some water here will help control that as well, but we'll need to eventually drive that water out of the sauce.
- in another small pan, use a tablespoon of oil and toast the almonds and peanuts (you could do this in an oven too). This is our last chance to bring roasted/toasted flavors into the sauce.
- With the half cup of masa and about a coup of water, make a slurry in a separate container. We will use this to thicken the sauce.
- Add the raisins and nuts to the sauce, and use the stick blender to pureé again.
- Slowly add about 1/4 of the masa slurry, stirring to integrate, and allow to simmer for a few minutes. Repeat this until the sauce is thickened. If it gets too thick, use additional chicken stock to loosen.
- Turn off heat, break up chocolate bar and add. Wait a minute or two while the chocolate melts. Stir to integrate.
- enjoy.
Turkey is a traditional Molé meat, but beef, pork, and chicken are also common variants. Once recipe I found online even used rabbit.
A real simple way to use this is as a 'simmer sauce'. Cook the meat, perhaps by pan frying, then cover in the sauce and simmer gently for ~half an hour. The sauce will flavor the meat, and the low, slow, moist heat will make the meat fork-fall-apart-tender. The prepared meat can then be served with rice, tortillas, black beans, etc.
###Recipe Notes:
- Notice we didn't actually add any salt. The chicken stock added salt, and depending on how your chilis were processed, they may have brought some into the recipe as well. Depending on how much of the chicken stock you used (vs. water), you may need to add some salt to 'perk up' the flavor.
- As with any complex spice mixture, the flavor develops if the sauce has a chance to 'rest'. I made this, put it into jars, and put it in the fridge, and didn't use it until the next day.
- The recipe as-is does have a little heat to it, but not much. You can control the heat by manipulating the ratio of peppers used. Just research the 'scoville units' of each of the peppers, or add back more of the chili seeds you removed when de-seeding.
- We only used one of the two chicken stocks explicitly. The other I used during the simmer and blend to control consistency. I just as easily could have used water.
- By using the canned tomato, I missed an opportunity for roasting. When I make this recipe when local tomatoes are in season, I will likely use ~15 roma tomatoes, seeded and peeled, roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes at high heat until a little color develops.
- except for the chicken stock, this recipe is vegetarian. I bet you could replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock and barely notice. I bet you could use water and salt too, although with both of those you'll miss some of the velvety mouthfeel you get from the gelatin in a real stock.
- Many recipes online use flour, or blend in a tortilla, etc. By using real masa, this recipe is also gluten-free.