It's All In The Sauce

Oaxaca is famous for its mole (moh-lay) sauce. In fact Oaxaca is nicknamed "Land of The Seven Moles". Six of these sauces are shown above. Mole is a thick sauce with complex flavors. The thickness and the many ingredients sets it apart from the more common salsa.

Mole uses many ingredients--often up to 30 different ingredients. Among them are chiles, almonds, raisins, pumpkin seeds, tomato, garlic, onions, bananas, chocolate, spices, lard and more. These ingredients are ground, mixed and blended by hand.

The most common way of eating mole is over chicken or turkey, although sometimes mole is in tamales or poured over tortillas. Because it takes a long time and much labor to make mole, it is most often made in large batches on special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, or holidays.
However...if you are in a hurry or you don't want to spend all the time and effort making your own mole, you can go to almost any store and buy a jar of mole sauce. The photo above is of one of the more famous Oaxacan mole brands--Mayor Domo. All you do is open the jar, add chicken bouillon and your mole is ready to pour over the chicken.

On a recent trip to the mountains of Oaxaca we were treated to "the real thing". I thought it would be interesting to take you through the process--start to finish.
Little did this chicken know as it walked and pecked its way around our feet that morning that it would be "sacrificed" for our dinner.
These are some of the many ingredients that go into making mole. An interesting side note is that chocolate is a major ingredient in mole. However, you absolutely can not taste the chocolate. If your mole sauce is too spicy, all you do is add more chocolate and that "calms" it down.

An important part of making the mole is roasting the chiles over an open fire before grinding them.
Once everything has been roasted, ground and mixed, it is put into an earthenware pot and put over an open fire to cook.
The finished product. Yum! Fresh, homemade mole sauce over chicken served with handmade tortillas.