🇲🇽 Mexico · Central Mexico
Mole de ollaMexican chile beef soup
A Mexican soup of beef (shank and marrow bone) simmered with a smooth broth of dried chiles, tomato and garlic, and filled with corn on the cob, chayote, squash, green beans and often the tart cactus fruit xoconostle, flavoured with epazote.
Origin and history
Mole de olla is described by the Mexican press as a soup representative of the cooking of central Mexico, where winters are cold. La Opinión lists green beans, corn, cabbage, zucchini, carrot and potato among its traditional vegetables, flavoured with epazote, and singles out xoconostle for its sweet-and-sour taste. The sources give no date or inventor for the dish.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 1 h 45 min
- Hands-on
- 40 min
Ingredients
- 1 kg2.2 lb beef shank (chamberete), boneless as in La Opinión, or bone-in
- 1 marrow bone (tuétano)
- 1 cup (about 150 g)1 cup white onion, in chunks, for the broth
- 4 liters4 quarts water, for the broth, plus 6 cups (1.4 liters) for the chile sauce
- 10 dried pasilla chiles, stemmed, seeded and deveined
- 4 cloves garlic
- 4 large ripe tomatoes, quartered
- 1 sprig epazote
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil, for frying the sauce
- 4 ears of corn (elotes), each cut into three pieces
- 3 carrots, cut in long pieces
- 2 chayotes, peeled, cut in large cubes
- 1 cup green beans (ejotes), trimmed and cut in pieces
- 4 xoconostles, peeled, halved, seeds scooped out, cut in quarters (the Kiwilimón recipe uses 3)
- 2 zucchini (calabacitas), cut in half-moons
- salt and pepper, to taste
- corn tortillas, to serve, hot
Method
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1. Put the beef, marrow bone, onion chunks, a little salt and 4 liters of water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, skim the white foam, then simmer for about 1 hour, until the beef is tender.
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2. Meanwhile heat the oil in a pan and fry the garlic, the pasilla chiles and the tomatoes until the chiles darken slightly and smell toasty, taking care not to burn them.
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3. Add 6 cups (1.4 liters) of water and the epazote sprig and let the mixture cool a little. Blend until completely smooth.
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4. Return the sauce to the pan with a little more oil and cook it for about 10 minutes, then pass it through a sieve into a bowl.
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5. When the beef is ready, stir the strained chile sauce into the broth and simmer for 5 minutes.
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6. Add the corn, carrots, chayotes, green beans and xoconostles and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes.
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7. Add the zucchini and cook for 10 minutes more, until all the vegetables are tender. Adjust salt and pepper.
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8. Serve very hot, in deep bowls with a piece of meat and a mix of vegetables in each, with corn tortillas.
Notes
- The amount of chile varies by recipe: this follows La Opinión's 10 pasilla chiles for 1 kg of beef and 4 liters of water; Kiwilimón uses 10 pasillas for 1.5 kg of beef. Use fewer chiles for a milder soup.
- Xoconostle, the fruit of a type of nopal, gives a strong sweet-and-sour note and is the most distinctive ingredient. If you cannot find it, a squeeze of lime at the table gives some of the sharpness, but the flavour will not be the same.
- Vegetables vary: La Opinión lists green beans, corn, cabbage, zucchini, carrot and potato as the traditional ones; Kiwilimón adds potato and chayote and uses a pressure cooker for the beef (about 30 minutes). Pasilla is the chile in both; a recipe on the Tortilla Digital site makes a paste of ancho chile, roasted tomato and sesame fried in lard, with pork backbone instead of beef.
- The 'mole' in the name here means a chile sauce used as the base of the broth. It is not a mole poblano.
- Make ahead: the soup keeps 2 days in the fridge; the vegetables soften, so add the zucchini only when reheating if you want them firm.
Adapted from La Opinión, Aprende a preparar el tradicional mole de olla mexicano, Kiwilimon, Beef Mole de Olla, and Tortilla Digital, Mole de olla tradicional (chef Veronica Ramirez).
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