Not-Quite-Homemade Chicken Mole

Chicken with chocolate sounds weird, no?  But what if the chocolate is spicy (not sweet), in a sauce that envelopes shredded chicken? Plus, the dish is served (in an enchilada or on its own) with rice and a salad of oranges and red onions. That preparation, chicken mole, is delicious.  

Maybe you’ve had chicken mole in a Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurant and didn’t even realize there was chocolate in the sauce. This quick-and-easy version uses prepared mole in a jar, but it’s still good enough to serve company.

I do plan to make mole from scratch someday, using Pati Jinich’s recipe for mole poblano. However, that requires many ingredients and lots of patience.  By contrast, this version of chicken mole uses only 4-5 ingredients if you don’t count water.  ( The fifth ingredient, salt, it optional and I often leave it out.) You don’t sacrifice flavor by opting for a commercially prepared mole sauce. The two brands that I have used, Goya and Dona Maria, contain many of the ingredients in Pati’s recipe and no preservatives or other additives. 

I learned to make this chicken mole from my law school roommate Penny. A California girl stuck in New York for three years, she had a jaunty step, a twinkle in her eye, and an irreverent attitude toward law school. Penny loved to host dinner parties. They had to be on the cheap. We were students, after all. But we had high standards for the quality of the food at our parties. After dinner, we rolled up the living room rug and danced until the wee hours, especially if exams had just ended. 

This chicken mole fit the bill perfectly. Although we didn’t stay in touch in the subsequent years, I’ve continued to make this mole. And when I do, I think of Penny and those fun times. 

Like Jewish chicken soup, you begin by simmering a whole chicken. (Check the chicken soup post for a rather anatomical description of how to check for, and remove the innards, known as giblets.)

But mole is simpler than making chicken soup in two important ways:

1. All you need for the cooking stage is an onion and water – no other vegetables or herbs, and
2. While chicken soup simmers for hours in order to concentrate the broth, mole only requires simmering the chicken until it is done.  The broth is less concentrated  and less flavorful. However it is flavorful enough when added to the spicy mole sauce. 

After cooking, you have to cool it down before shredding the meat. Simply leaving the hot chicken on the counter until it cools takes too long. Besides, it is dangerous. Cooling it in the refrigerator isn’t much faster. 

In my experience, the fastest and best way to cool the cooked chicken is to put it, whole, into a bowl submerged in a second, larger bowl filled with ice and a bit water. That method cools the chicken down in a hurry. 

As the chicken cools, mix the mole sauce with some of the broth that the chicken created when it was simmered in water. Straight from the jar, mole sauce is hard and almost clay-like. Gradually, as you stir in the broth, break up the lumps, and cook the mole, it turns into a thick sauce. Add a bit of sugar and you’re almost done.

Once the chicken is shredded and the sauce is ready, you just combine them and let the chicken mole cook for a few minutes. 

Writing this post, I had a vision of an even quicker version – using a store-roasted chicken and prepared broth, maybe homemade, frozen in ice cube trays. Far be it from me to suggest that you make this not-quite-homemade dish even easier. Still, it’s not a bad idea. In fact, the next time I’m really in a time crunch and don’t want to serve plain roast chicken, I may very well do it. 

Print Recipe

Not-Quite-Homemade Chicken Mole Yum

An easy and delicious way to make chicken mole. Using mole sauce from a jar and freshly cooked chicken, this dish comes together quickly and inexpensively.

Prep Time

45 minutes

Cook Time

90 minutes

Servings

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken About 3-4 pounds, giblets removed, stewing
• 1 9oz. jar of Mole sauce
• 1 medium-large onion peeled and cut in half
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 pinches salt optional

Prep Time 45 minutes Cook Time 90 minutes Servings Ingredients 1 whole chicken About 3-4 pounds, giblets removed, stewing 1 9oz. jar of Mole sauce 1 medium-large onion peeled and cut in half 2 tablespoons sugar 3 pinches salt optional

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, add the chicken and onion. Once it comes back to a boil, skim off any foam that has developed and lower the heat slightly, keeping the water at a steady simmer for 30-45 minutes until the chicken is full cooked. If you are not sure whether the chicken is done, gently cut into the thick part on the top of the breast. It should be white all the way through to the bone (not pink) and should cut easily.
2. Once the chicken is fully cooked, carefully move it to a bowl, and refrigerate the cooked chicken covered with foil, until it is cool enough to handle or put the bowl containing the chicken into a larger bowl filled with ice.  Do not leave the cooked chicken sitting on the counter until it is cool; that is an invitation for bacteria to grow and the object here is to enjoy the meal, not spend hours or days recovering from it.
3. Strain the chicken broth and put it in the refrigerator.  While it doesn't have to be chilled, the broth should not sit out at room temperature while the chicken cools down. (You can use the double bowl/ice method here too if you want to cook the broth quickly before refrigerating it.) For a lower fat broth, refrigerate it until the fat solidifies and you can skim it off the top. Reserve about 2 1/2-3 cups and freeze the rest for another dish that calls for chicken broth or use it as the base for a quick chicken soup with vegetables and condiments to pump up the flavor.
4. Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, pull off the skin and discard it. Shred the meat into bite-size pieces.  A chicken close to 4 pounds yields a heaping pasta-size bowl of shredded meat.
5. Pour 1½ cups of the broth into a clean pot.  Bring it to a simmer and add the contents of the jar of mole.  At first it will clump. Working with the back of a wooden spoon, smooth out the lumps while gently stirring the simmering sauce.  Add 2-3 tablespoons of sugar and an optional pinch or two of salt.  Taste the sauce – it should be spicy (but not overwhelmingly so) and definitely not sweet.
6. Cook the sauce at a simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.  Slowly add more broth during that time.  The sauce should stir easily but not be too thin.  You can always add more sugar or broth, but you can’t easily recover from adding too much of either - start with the minimum and add more slowly.  I’ve never used more than 3 tablespoons of sugar, but sometimes use a bit less, and the amount of broth is generally close to, or just over, 2 cups, but the exact amount may vary.
7. Add in the shredded chicken stir until the chicken is fully coated with sauce and let it cook for another 3-5 minutes to assure that the chicken is heated.
8. Serve the mole on top of rice with beans and  orange/red onion salad on the side.

Recipe Notes

Chicken mole is a great “do ahead” dish. If serving it later, reserve another ½ cup or so of the chicken broth for reheating, as the mixture get thicker after being refrigerated. Warm the extra broth and stir it in just before serving.

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 I originally published this post in February 2013. Three years later, I  substantially reworked it, with new photos. The recipe ingredients and directions, while edited, remain substantively the same as in the original version.