For The Best Mole Sauce, Use This Type Of Chocolate

'Mole' is a broad term, and because the word itself comes from the old Aztec Nahuatl word for 'sauce,' mole includes lots of different sauces. It's a rich sauce with a rich history and plenty of hyperlocal and family recipes in Mexico, but the most common mole in the United States is mole poblano. Your average mole poblano includes lots of chiles and spices which give it this earthy kick. If you're completely new to mole, you may not know that this spicy sauce (a staple of any 60-second intro to Oaxacan food) usually includes chocolate. It can lead to some amazing meat dishes, but how does chocolate end up pulling that off?

Some professional advice is always helpful, so we asked Justin Mosel, chef and executive culinary director at Rubio's Coastal Grill, the Mexican chain which is currently one of Gen Z's favorite restaurants. According to Mosel, chocolate works with lots of the other ingredients in mole really well. "Chocolate is used in moles to add complexity, color and complementary sweet and bitter notes to ingredients such as nuts and seeds." What chocolate should you get, specifically? Mosel recommends a heavy dark chocolate, especially if it's over 75% cacao. For a specific brand, Mosel recommends Taza, an American company which makes Mexican-style stone ground chocolate. More broadly though, any good quality Mexican dark chocolate with a strong flavor should work.

This isn't to say that any dark chocolate will work, though, and for a few reasons. The minimum cocoa percentage that qualifies as dark chocolate varies across the chocolate world (and federal food authorities), but the standard minimum is usually 50% percent cocoa. This means that over half of the chocolate you're eating uses cocoa liquor and nibs from the cocoa plant, while the remaining percentage is mostly sugar. With less sugar, darker chocolates have a more bitter taste (which is why milk chocolate tastes way sweeter). But an overly sweet chocolate could throw off that bitter, sweet flavor balance in mole. Plus, what makes Mexican chocolate unique is that it's made from finely ground cocoa and typically includes cinnamon, which makes it better equipped to balance the other spices in the sauce.

With all that said, dark chocolate isn't the only answer. If you can't (or don't want to) include Mexican chocolate in your mole sauce, are there any other ingredients that you — as a chocolate hater — can substitute to capture those same mole flavors? Mosel says yes, there are. Alternatives to dark Mexican chocolate include "poblano chiles, almond butter, or low-sugar cocoa powder. Each will contribute to the depth of complexity signature to moles while providing textural context." So you have options to work some extra depth into the sauce.