Few dishes embody the rich and complex flavors of Mexican cooking quite like a good Mole sauce. It’s a family of dishes that are so quintessentially Mexican, jam packed full of peppers, veggies, and spices and served over top your favorite Latin dishes; or is even great served with a meat over rice and served with tortillas. There’s a lot to love about this dish served in a very simple package, with Midamar’s Halal chicken thighs, served hot out of the pressure cooker so it’s done in no time!
With most mole, you’re going to be doing a lot of simmering of various veggies, peppers, and aromatics before blending them up and cooking them together into a smooth and creamy sauce. This recipe skips a lot of the preparation time while maintaining the essence by cooking the chicken in the sauce in a pressure cooker.
But first you have to make that mole puree, and that’s the classic blend of ancho chiles, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, onion, tomato, and tasty spices like cumin and cinnamon. And a CRUCIAL ingredient that adds a ton of flavor to this is from the toasted almonds that get blended with them. They add a very tasty nuttiness to the sort of smokey, sort of savory, and entirely flavorful blend.
Toasting these is the most complicated part of the recipe, so that should tell you a lot about how easy this is. They just need to get tossed around in a pan over low heat until they’re golden-brown. They have a habit of burning quickly, so once they’re ready, you’re all set to blend all of these ingredients together into a sort of salsa-like sauce.
Believe it or not, that’s most of the prep for this recipe. Just toss that puree into a pressure cooker with some of Midamar’s Halal chicken thighs and water, then cook it for about 15 minutes. Chicken breast will also work great for this recipe if you prefer, but the mole sauce is so flavorful, we wanted our dark meat chicken to be able to offer its own flavor and shine a little bit on its own.
After it’s done cooking, the final key ingredient is good to go in: a few ounces of bittersweet chocolate. This really ties all the flavors together for me; it doesn’t make the sauce sweet, per se, but rather incredibly smooth and rich. It complements the freshness of the tomato and onion, and plays really well with the spice from the peppers.
We used more chipotles in adobo sauce than many might prefer, and while it wasn’t tremendously spicy, we cut it a bit at the end by mixing in some honey. If you aren’t a spice lover, this is still a great recipe for you to try, you can just cut down on the chipotles and you’re good to go.
When everything is done cooking, as always, give it a taste and adjust the seasonings according to what you like. That’s the beauty of home cooking! And when it’s tasting how you like, serve this mole and chicken over some rice, topped with sliced red onion on a corn tortilla and enjoy and authentic Mexican classic recipe.
This is a great recipe for busy nights, it’s done in no time and the flavors all punch way above what you might expect from such a quick recipe. But you should never just take my word for it, you have to try it for yourself! I’m excited for you to give this a try, share it with another connoisseur of Mexican cuisine, and enjoy until next time.
