Mexican Chicken Mole Recipe with Dark Chocolate

A scintillating blend of dark chocolate, red chilli and aromatic spices weave their magic in this Mexican Chicken Mole recipe. It’s deliciously tender AND easy enough to prepare for a mid-week dinner.

Why We Love This

Mexican Chicken Mole (aka Mexican Chocolate Chicken) is a rich and decadent dish featuring aromatic spices and dark chocolate. Despite a “long” ingredient list, it’s surprisingly simple to make. You can even prepare the chocolate mole sauce in advance, or freeze for that next Mexican dinner. 

We first discovered this for recipe Mexican Chicken Mole when a friend cooked it for us on New Year’s Eve. Before the clock struck midnight and fireworks crackled through the sky, we shared a Mexican-themed potluck feast.

Platters were piled high with nachos, tacos and refried beans aplenty, but this Mexican Chicken Mole recipe stole the show. The first bite of tender shredded chicken in rich, dark and spicy chocolate-infused sauce had us totally hooked.

What is Mexican Chicken Mole?

Mexican Chocolate Chicken Mole is a type of mole sauce made from chillies, spices, chocolate, nuts and fruit and slow cooked chicken pieces.

Our wandering adventures haven’t quite led us to Mexico (yet!), but that doesn’t mean we can’t do a little kitchen adventuring at home in the meantime.

When we sat down to plan this recipe, however, we never realised traditional mole sauces get a bit of a bad rap for seeming to involve lots of ingredients and a lot of time. 

So with a little experimentation, we created a simplified version which is easy (and quick) to make for a mid-week dinner.

The hardest part is chopping the onion – the rest is left to the blender and saucepan!

What You’ll Need For Chocolate Chicken Mole

The recipe below may seem to have a long ingredients list, but look closer and you’ll realise that a good chunk of them are dried spices. Other than those, there are a few key ingredients you’ll need to create your very own rich and decadent Mexican Chicken Mole sauce:

• Dark chocolate – Traditional Mexican Chicken Mole recipes call for spiced Mexican chocolate, but if you’re like us and can’t easily source it at home, you can substitute with a dark, bittersweet cocoa chocolate. Aim for at least 85% cocoa if you can.
• Chillis – Traditional mole recipes call for a range of different types of chillis including pasilla/negro, puya, ancho and mulato, but to keep things simple we’ve modified this recipe to instead make use of regular large dried red chillis (or small if you can’t find the big ones). However,  if you can get your hands on traditional chillies, we definitely encourage your own chilli mole experiments!
• Chicken – We used wings and legs as an economic and flavourful way to prepare this dish, but you could also use breast (like in our video) or thigh fillets and shred them if you prefer.

How to Make Simplified Chicken Mole

1. Heat half a cup of vegetable oil in a medium frying pan and add your dried chillies. Heat them through gently until they just start to blacken, but don’t allow to burn (1-2 minutes). Carefully remove the chillies from the oil and pop into a small bowl, then cover with boiling water and allow to soak for around 30 mins.
2. Pour the chilli oil into a large saucepan or casserole dish over medium-high heat. Add the chicken (pieces or whole) and sprinkle with salt and pepper, cook for three minutes or so per side (Watch out for spitting oil!).
3. Once cooked, return all the chicken to the frying pan (which you used to cook the chilli) and add the orange juice and half the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and allow to bubble away for around 20 mins, rotating the chicken every 5 minutes or so to coat.

4. Meanwhile, back in the large saucepan/casserole dish, heat up the chilli oil on a medium heat and add your chopped onion and garlic.Next add the oregano, cumin, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, fennel seeds, coriander seeds and cinnamon stick. Cook for a couple of minute or two until the spices are nice and fragrant.
5. Add in the peanuts, pepitas, torn chunks of bread, tomato puree and raisins, along with the softened chillis.
6. Pour in the remaining chicken stock and simmer for 10-15 minutes to allow all those gorgeous flavours to blend.

7. Now, remove from the heat and take out your cinnamon stick to blend the sauce. You can do this with a stick blender or by transferring the sauce in batches into a food processor.
8. Add in your dark chocolate and allow to melt gently into the sauce. Give it a good stir and a taste test.
9. Place your cooked chicken (whole or shredded) along with its juices and stock back into the pot with your blended mole sauce and cover. Return to the heat and warm through before serving.

Wandercook’s Tips

• Make Ahead – You can make mole up to three days in advance and let all those gorgeous flavours blend together even more.

FAQ’s

Variations

• If you can’t source traditional Mexican chillis, feel free to simplify with regular red chillis. 
• You can substitute orange juice for orange peel (or water if you prefer not to include the citrus notes in this dish). 

Spice lover? Try these next:

★ Did you make this recipe? Please leave a comment and star rating below!