Here is a recipe for making a simple molé with just a few ingredients and just a little bit of time. We have made this while staying in Mexico when we don’t have access to our house full of ingredients, but want the big flavors to add to our taco meat or nachos. While this is a perfectly fine sauce it does lack a lot of the subtleties of the more involved molés so it’s not really a replacement for those, but something that works in the right situation. Once we have the molé we will show you how easy it is to add to chicken to make delicious tacos or nachos.

This recipe is naturally gluten free.

Watch a Video

Here is a video of 2 Cooks in the Kitchen Making Quick and Easy 30 Minute Molé:

Finding the Chiles

When we are in Mexico we look for places where we can get a few staple ingredients right away. We want some basic dried chiles so we look for anchos, pasillas, and de arbol. These chiles can be found everywhere and they are often of much better quality than we find at home. We see them at all the vegetable markets as well as the chain stores.

Mexican Staple Ingredients

Some other staples we look for are tomatoes, serranos, limes, onions, and garlic. Those are all you need for a great pico de gallo salsa, which takes care of a lot of snacks. We rarely see any tomatoes other than some hard romas but those are easy to dice for the salsa and they cook up just fine for molés and sauces.

Other Good to Have Ingredients

If we know we will have a kitchen we’ll also find some cumin, chicken broth, tomato sauce, avocados and pineapple. That rounds out what we need to make some fantastic things such as guacamole and sauces. Pineapple salsa is a favorite of ours. Here are our molé ingredients plus we added pineapple and part of a chocolate bar.

De-stem and Seed the Dried Chiles

We’ll start by removing the seeds from the chiles. We are just going to tear these into pieces so there is no need to be gentle. We just want the seeds out.

Boil Chiles and Tomatoes

Next we’ll cut the tomato into quarters and put them into a pan with the chiles. Add a little water and boil this for 10 minutes. Of all the ways to soften chiles this is the easiest and quickest.

Blend the Chiles and Tomatoes

After boiling, we put the chiles and tomatoes and 1/2 cup of the water into a blender along with a little cumin and salt and blend until it forms a smooth paste.

Cook Onion and Garlic

Next we will heat some oil in a skillet over medium heat. Once the oil is hot we will add the onion and garlic. We want to cook this for a couple minutes until the onion is translucent.

Add the Chile Paste

Now we will add our chile paste to the skillet and stir it all together. At this point we have a very basic molé in our pan and we just need to cook it together and add a little more flavor.

Add Tomato Sauce and Chicken Broth

We want to add a little bit of tomato sauce as well as some chicken broth. We won’t add too much of either since we want this to be kind of thick rather than soupy. So we’ll add about 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce and maybe 1/4 cup of chicken broth.

Add Acidic Fruit For Brightness

We can let this cook and reduce for 5 to 10 minutes and still make it in under 30 minutes. We will also add pineapple. The first time we made this we had mango on hand as well so we added both. It was fantastic. If you don’t have access to either of those, green apple diced up small would work or possibly even tomatillo. What we want is a little bit of acid and brightness from the fruit to give the molé a different dimension. It is similar to the use of fruit in al Pastor and Molé Manchamanteles.

Add Chocolate

One last optional thing you can add for a traditional molé rojo flavor is chocolate. Usually we would use baking chocolate for this but we bought a Mexican Chocolate bar that is 80% cacao, so not too sweet but has a little sugar. Just an ounce of that will give your molé a nice flavor.

Add Molé to Chicken to Make Taco Meat

Once the chocolate has melted our molé is complete. At this point the longer you cook it the more the flavors will develop but if you are in a hurry it is ready to use now. We like to add it to shredded chicken to make taco meat or to put over nachos. In Mexico we can go over to the rotisseria and get a whole chicken to bring home and shred. We’ll just put the chicken in a pan with a little oil, add molé and heat it up and it’s ready to go.

Make Tacos

Put a little chicken molé on a tortilla, add a little more diced pineapple and some pico de gallo. Top with cheese and cilantro and you have the most delicious tacos. In Mexico we can walk over to the tortilleria and get delicious hot tortillas right off the press.

Make Nachos

Another of our favorite uses for the chicken molé is nachos. We put some tortilla chips on a plate or pie pan, pile some chicken on top, add cheese and put it in the microwave or oven to melt. Top with pico de gallo and you have a nice snack or an unbalanced dinner.

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We have a lot of other Molé recipes for you to explore. These more classic molés involve more time and effort but they are worth it.

• Molé Colorado
• Molé Verde
• Molé Amarillo
• Classic Molé Rojo
• Easy Molé Rojo
• Molé Coloradito
• Molé Chuchilo Negro
• Molé Manchamanteles
• Molé Poblano
• Oaxacan Molé Negro

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