Making mole is not something you do in an afternoon. The recipe from Oaxaca — the negro mole that is sometimes called one of the greatest sauces in the world — involves 30 or more ingredients, three kinds of dried chiles toasted individually until they reach the right color and aroma, multiple rounds of grinding, the patience to allow everything to develop over hours, and the knowledge of when to stop. In many families, the knowledge of how to make mole is passed directly from person to person, without a written recipe, because the recipe is in the hands and the nose and the years of practice. It is a dish that demands everything you have.
What is mole?
Mole (from Nahuatl mōlli, meaning "sauce") is a family of complex Mexican sauces, most associated with the states of Oaxaca and Puebla, made from a combination of dried chiles, spices, nuts, seeds, fruits, and various aromatics, often including chocolate in the darker varieties. There are multiple distinct types: mole negro (dark, complex, containing chocolate and multiple chiles), mole rojo (red, chile-forward), mole verde (green, made with tomatillos and herbs), mole amarillo (yellow), mole coloradito, mole chichilo, and mole manchamanteles — the "tablecloth stainer." Oaxaca's seven moles are among the state's most celebrated cultural products. Puebla's mole poblano, perhaps the most internationally known, is served at festivals and claimed as a national dish. According to food historians including those at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, mole has roots in pre-Columbian Mexica cooking, though the complex sauces as we know them today incorporate Spanish-era ingredients.
Mole as an event
Mole is not everyday food in most Mexican families. It is celebration food — the sauce that appears at weddings, baptisms, quinceañeras, large family gatherings. Making it is an act of love and labor that communicates: this occasion matters enough for me to spend two days preparing. In many families, mole is made communally — multiple women in the kitchen together, each responsible for a stage, the recipe alive in their collective memory.
Mole in the diaspora kitchen
For Mexican-American families in the United States, making mole is often the most ambitious act of culinary preservation — the attempt to keep a recipe that doesn't translate easily because so much of it lives outside the written word. Smile Mas celebrates the families who make that effort, and the culture that produced the dish worth preserving.
Keep reading:
Oaxaca: Where Culture Is Made and Remembered
Pozole: The Celebration Dish That Goes All Night
Abuela: The Matriarch at the Center of It All