Two steps, not one
First the powder becomes a paste. About three quarters of a cup of powder, a quarter cup of warm broth and a quarter cup of water, worked together in the pan until it is thick and even with no dry grit left in it.
Then the paste becomes a sauce. Loosen it with roughly three times its own volume of hot broth, poured in gradually rather than all at once, stirring as it goes. Pour it all in at the start and you get a pan of lumps floating in thin liquid.
What a cup of paste feeds
One cup of paste opens out to about four cups of sauce, which covers four to six plates depending on how generously you ladle. That is the arithmetic to run before you start, because scaling up halfway through a simmering pan is awkward.
Twenty minutes, and keep the spoon moving
Once it is at sauce consistency, give it about twenty minutes at a low simmer. This is where the ground chiles, seeds and cacao stop tasting raw and start tasting like one thing.
It scorches easily. Ground seeds and cacao settle and catch on the bottom of the pan, and once they catch, the burn goes through the whole batch and cannot be stirred out. Keep the heat low, keep the spoon moving, and scrape the bottom rather than the surface.
Too thin, too thick
Both are normal and both are fixable at the stove. Reach for the first fix on the list before the last one.
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| Too thin | Let it reduce uncovered for a few minutes before anything else |
| Still too thin | Stir in a spoon of nut paste, a little masa, a toasted tortilla blitzed fine, or stale bread |
| Too thick | Add hot broth a little at a time, off the boil, until it falls off the spoon the way you want |
| Thick again the next day | Nothing is wrong. It tightens in the fridge and hot broth opens it back up |
Which of the two to make
Mole Oaxaqueno comes out of the Oaxaca kitchen, where a whole family of moles lives. Mole Poblano is the Puebla recipe, the one most people outside Mexico have eaten, ladled over turkey and chicken at weddings and at Christmas.
We will not tell you which one runs darker or sweeter, because we have not put them side by side and measured it. Both work the same way in the pan, and both want the same twenty minutes.
Paste first, then three parts hot broth to one part paste, then twenty minutes of stirring.
