Sponsored by MegaMex Foods
Americans’ love of Mexican cuisine has surged for decades and shows no signs of slowing. According to research firm, Technomic Ignite, 75,000 Mexican restaurants were operating in the U.S. in 2023, and yet, Mexican food fans want more.
With the proliferation of food and travel shows about Mexico, the desire for authentic tastes of south-of-the-border fare is on the rise, especially for creations like mole.
Technomic reports that menu mentions of mole have increased 10.3 percent in appetizers over the past year and that mole has worked its way into an increasing variety of egg dishes—even onto sushi.
Cooking a delicious mole, however, is challenging, and sourcing authentic Mexican ingredients in the U.S. isn’t easy. Expensive kitchen labor and high turnover also makes a never-ending and costly battle out of training cooks to make mole consistently.
With DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo, however, all of those problems are solved. Made in Mexico, this mole paste offers easy access to truly authentic flavors that can be used as a tool for innovation all across the menu.
More about mole
The birthplace of mole (which translates roughly to “sauce”) is attributed to the state of Puebla and viewed as Mexico’s national dish. In the state next door, Oaxaca, traditionalists acknowledge seven unique moles: rojo, coloradito, amarillo, verde, negro, chichilo, and manchamantel. All are made from an extensive range of specific ingredients and techniques that require hours of effort and close attention to render their coveted and complex flavors.
Generations of Mexican cooks made large batches of mole shelf-stable by reducing it to a thick paste that could be rehydrated for later meals. As foodservice companies replicated those traditional methods, brands of ready-to-use mole proliferated. Dan Burrows, consulting chef for MegaMex Foods, says some moles, while time saving, weren’t always top-quality products.
“A common problem with shelf-stable mole pastes is they can become so hard that they’re really difficult to get out of the jars they come in,” says Burrows. To address that challenge, MegaMex Foods put DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo in a larger-mouth plastic tub and “adjusted the consistency to make it easy to remove.”
Recreating complex flavors
Finding authentic ingredients required for mole is difficult in the U.S., Burrows says. Ingredients grown and produced in Mexico have distinctly unique flavors and textures. Fortunately, DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo is made in Mexico.
“We had the benefit of getting the right ingredients from the best sources,” Burrows says. Creating the first DOÑA MARIA® mole took nearly two years, Burrows adds. “As David Hernandez, our senior R&D manager, would remind us regularly, ‘If you want to make it right, you have to make it authentic.’”
Created specifically for foodservice kitchens, DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo Paste uses a rich blend of mild ancho and pasilla peppers, peanuts, sesame seeds, and a touch of chocolate. Traditionally, this delicious sauce goes well with chicken, turkey, and practically any other protein. But with minimal tweaks and twists, it becomes the backbone of imaginative salad dressings, pizza sauces, glazes for chicken wings, and smoked ribs—even a sweet-and-rich dipping sauce for churros.
“We created a recipe for mole vinaigrette by adding the Mole Rojo Paste to oil and vinegar, and it worked really well on a chicken salad with lettuce and crunchy tortillas,” Burrows says. “You can put mole rojo on fried chicken for an interesting twist on hot chicken.”
To refine the DOÑA MARIA® product, the MegaMex team took samples to chefs across nearly every foodservice segment “and we asked them if this is what they expect mole to be, and their feedback was positive.” Burrows says. “We’re excited to be sampling it at this year’s National Restaurant Show in Chicago in May.”
The real achievement of DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo Paste, Burrows says, is that it’s labor free. All that’s required to prepare a batch of DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo is heating 64 ounces of water or broth to 210oF, adding a full container of mole paste (a 4-to-1 ratio) and whisking until smooth.
“When made from scratch, mole takes hours. It’s a multi-step and multi-pan process, and you can’t just walk away from it because you have to make sure nothing burns,” Burrows says. “But using DOÑA MARIA® Mole Rojo Paste is almost foolproof to make a delicious mole just by following our instructions.”
Expand your menu offerings with innovative flavors made easy by MegaMex Foods. Click here to learn more.
