Mole ​Food

Wednesday, November 1

In Mexico, Oaxaca is known for having the best food in Mexico. Whenever we said something positive about the food in Mexico City, whether it was at a humble street food stand or in a restaurant, the Mexican vendors or servers told us that we definitely had to go to Oaxaca too. So we ended up spending a whole month in Oaxaca and enjoyed the good food in cafes, restaurants, street stalls and of course in the markets.

On our very first day in the city of Oaxaca we noticed how much good cocoa and hot chocolate you could buy in the city. Here in Oaxaca, however, cacao is not only consumed as a drink, but is also people cook with it. The most popular dish from Oaxaca is “Mole”. Mole is a thick, porridge-like sauce/puree that is usually served with chicken, rice and tortillas. But Mole is not a sauce that completes a dish but is considered a whole dish itself. For example, if you order “Mole con pollo”, i.e. mole with chicken, the mole is the star of the dish and not, as you might think, the chicken. Mole is made from many different ingredients, such as various hot and non-hot chilies, nuts, seeds and cacao. The ingredients are usually roasted for a long time and then ground, mixed with water and seasoned until a creamy, intense sauce is created.

Depending on which ingredients the mole consists of, it has a different color. The red, black and yellow moles each represent a different unique dish with its own recipe and do not just indicate different colors. So you don't just order "Mole", but you have to specify more precisely when ordering whether you want black, red or yellow moles because they are considered entirely different dishes. No matter which mole, mole is usually eaten with rice, corn tortillas and chicken.

Because mole is one of Oaxaca's most popular dishes, at the local market you’ll not only find food stalls where you can eat ready-made mole on site, but also many stalls that sell dried chili peppers, nuts and roasted cacao for cooking mole at home. We spent weeks eating different mole dishes and were amazed at how good the various nuts, spices and, above all, cacao worked in savoury dishes.