📍 Xico

Mole Xiqueño

Name: Mole Xiqueño
Prep time: 60 min
Cook time: 120 min
Total time: 180 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 6 pieces of chicken; Mulato, ancho, and pasilla chiles; Almonds, peanuts, and sesame seeds; Prunes and raisins; Plantain and fried tortilla; Table chocolate, cinnamon, and clove

· Lunch

A sweet, velvety mole from the Magical Town of Xico, made with more than twenty ingredients including chiles, dried fruits, cacao, and spices.

Editorial content by WorldBites · 2026-10-04 · Contact

Mole Xiqueño: A sweet, velvety mole from the Magical Town of Xico, made with more than twenty ingredients including chiles, dried fruits, cacao, and spices. — Photo: T.Tseng · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia CommonsPhoto resized, converted to WebP and cropped for display.

⏱ 180 min🍽 8 servings📊 Difficult🏷 Commonly associated

Preparation: 60 min
Cooking: 120 min
Waiting and resting: 0 min

History

Mole de Xico, or mole xiqueño, is one of the most representative dishes of Veracruz cuisine. Its preparation can take more than two days and stands out for being sweeter than other dark moles thanks to the use of fruits such as prunes and plantain.

Ingredients

Adjust quantitiesServings

Only numeric quantities at the start of an ingredient are adjusted. Descriptive quantities, seasoning to taste and timings remain unchanged; check them when changing servings.

Preparation

1
Toast and soak the cleaned, seeded chiles.
2
Fry the dried fruits, seeds, plantain, and tortilla.
3
Grind everything with the chiles and spices into a paste.
4
Fry the paste in a casserole and add broth little by little.
5
Stir in the chocolate and cook over low heat until it thickens.
6
Bathe the cooked chicken pieces and serve with sesame seeds.

Cooking tips

Toast chiles for seconds and fry fruits separately to control browning.

Technique and preparation

What to check during preparation

Toast chiles and seeds separately because they burn at different rates. Discard scorched ingredients, whose bitterness affects the whole sauce. Soak chiles until soft and blend with enough liquid for a fine paste. Stir from the bottom while cooking the paste to prevent sticking. Add broth gradually and taste the balance before chocolate. Cook chicken before covering it with mole.