Mole de Olla (Beef Mole de Olla)

Mole de Olla is nothing else than a scrumptious beef Mexican chilli broth, it is a very different from the thick mole poblano sauce you all probably know or have heard, this dish is very healthy because it has lots of vegetables and packed with beautiful flavour given by the epazote and chillies.

The mole de Olla can be made with beef or pork and different types of chillies, depending how hot you like your food, in this ocassion I only used guajillo and ancho chillies because I didn’t want it to be too spicy as this is going to be eaten by my children as well, but if you can habdle heat then add 3 arbol chillies.

One of the ingredients that characterised this dish is fresh epazote, a Mexican herb, its flavour is quite difficult to describe, but it gives a uniqueness to this recipe, I don’t have fresh one, so I am using dry epazote, another ingredient that is used is the xoconostle, which is a type of prickly pear, similar to the tuna, but if you can’t find some here, don’t worry.

This recipe is so good, healthy and very easy to make that you will see yourself making it very often.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 large beef osso bucco cut in chunks
• Dried epazote to taste
• 2 tomatoes cut in half
• 1/2 onion
• 4 cloves garlic peeled
• Kosher salt to taste
• 3 pepper corns
• 3 dried guajillo chillies, cleaned, deseeded.
• 1 ancho chilli, cleaned, deseeded
• 2 arbol chillies if you want more heat (optional)

Vegetables

• 2 large carrots peeled and cut in chunks
• 2 large courgettes cut in chunks
• 3 large potatoes peeled and cut in chunks
• 1 Chayote cut in chunks (vegetable fruit) optional
• 2 corn on cob cut in pieces
• 75 gr green beans cut

Method

Put the meat, tomatoes, onion, garlic, epazote in a large casserole dish covering everything with enough water and put in to cook first at high heat and once it is boiling, low the heat down and let simmer until the meat is almost falling apart, this takes around 1 hr 45 min.

Once the onion, tomato and garlic have given the flavour, remove them from the broth and keep it aside to use with the chillies to make the sauce.

To make the chilli sauce put the chillies to boil with water for 10 min. Then blend them together with the tomato, onion and one garlic, all these vegetables from the broth, then sieve it and add it to the meat.

Just 30 min before the meat is done, start adding the vegetables in this order: carrots, after 10 min add the potatoes, then corn, after the chayote, courgettes and green beans.

When everything is cooked, serve it in a bowl with some lime wedges.

Listo!

Provecho!