Chicken Mole Enchiladas — Lightly fried corn tortillas are stuffed with chicken, rolled up, and smothered in rich mole sauce for the best chicken mole enchiladas! A classic, Mexican-inspired family favorite comfort food recipe made FAST and EASY! A shortcut mole recipe that doctors up store bought mole is provided if you don’t want to make homemade mole.
Chicken Mole Enchiladas Recipe
These easy chicken mole enchiladas are filled with tender chicken, smothered in richly flavored mole sauce, then topped with lettuce, tomato, queso fresco, sour cream, cilantro, and onion.
If you like really saucy enchiladas, or if you’re like me and like food that’s generally super saucy and smothered, then these chicken enchiladas with mole, or enmoladas de mole as they’re called in Spanish, will become a fast new favorite easy recipe.
Mole sauce is one of my favorite salsas because it’s lightly sweetened and I am a sucker for anything sweet-and-savory.
I have a homemade Mole Sauce with cocoa and peanut butter in the mole sauce, and although you can’t directly taste them, they give such fabulous richness, depth of flavor, and a touch of sweetness.
However, never fear! You can doctor up store-bought mole to make these chicken enchiladas that everyone just loves in just 30 minutes!
Ingredients in Chicken Enchiladas de Mole (Enmoladas de Mole)
For these incredible chicken enchiladas with mole sauce, you’ll need the following fridge and pantry ingredients:
- Vegetable oil
- Corn tortillas
- Mole (OR use store bought Dona Maria Mole Sauce + chicken broth + Abuelita chocolate + creamy peanut butter + granulated sugar)
- Shredded rotisserie chicken
- Iceberg lettuce
- Tomato
- Sour cream or Mexican crema, optional for garnishing
- Shredded cheese or queso fresco, optional for garnishing
- White onion, optional for garnishing
- Cilantro, optional for garnishing
- Avocado, optional for garnishing
Tip
I linked to the ingredients you may not heard of, but nearly all well-stocked grocery stores will have them in stock in either the Mexican section or dairy case for the crema and queso.
How to Make Chicken Enchiladas with Mole Sauce
To make chicken mole enchiladas, follow these straightforward steps and they’ll be ready in no time.
Mole Tip
If don’t already have hot homemade mole sauce on hand, make sure to start doctoring up store bought mole sauce (see below for more info) because it needs to simmer for about 20 minutes.
Step 1: Heat the oil in a skillet, add a tortilla and cook for 10 seconds.
Flip and cook for 10 seconds more.
Step 2: Dip the hot tortilla in mole sauce, coating both sides.
Step 3: Add chicken to the middle and roll up.
Step 4: Repeat with all the remaining tortillas and then nestle them in a casserole dish.
Step 5: Optionally drizzle extra mole over the top of the tortillas.
Step 6: Evenly sprinkle with lettuce, tomato, and any optional garnishes such as crema, queso fresco, cilantro, or avocado and serve immediately!
Do I Need to Make Homemade Mole Sauce?
Homemade Mole Sauce is amazing! There is nothing that compares to this salsa that’s like a big warm hug, but in sauce form.
Make it if you can and have some extra time. It freezes great too so you can make extra and stash it for a rainy day as long as you’re going to the work of making it.
However, as I touched on already, you don’t have to make your scratch mole sauce for chicken mole enchiladas.
How to Make a Quick Mole Sauce for Enchiladas
You can make a quick semi-homemade mole sauce by using and doing the following:
- Add one 8.5-ounce can Dona Maria Mole Sauce to a medium saucepan
- Add 3 cups chicken broth
- Add 1 tablet of Abuelita chocolate
- Add 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
- Add 1 tablespoon granulated sugar, stir, and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
This becomes your salsa de mole for the chicken enchiladas with mole.
Can I Make Vegetarian Mole Enchiladas?
If you want to make vegetarian mole enchiladas, feel free to swap out the chicken for:
- A black bean and corn mixture
- Refried beans
- Sweet potatoes, black beans, and corn
What to Serve with Mole Enchiladas
I like to serve my homemade chicken mole enchiladas with:
- a side of Refried Beans
- rice
- a Black Bean Corn Avocado Salad
- any type of grilled vegetables or salad
Storage Instructions
The enchiladas are best right after you make them. Hot and fresh wins! If you let them sit, the mole sauce will tend to make the tortillas a bit soggy so enjoy them right away.
These enchiladas with chicken and mole aren’t a great make-ahead dish for that reason.
Extra mole sauce when stored separately will keep airtight in the fridge for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 4 months.
Tips for the Best Mole Sauce Chicken Enchiladas
When making the chicken mole enchiladas, you need to fry the tortillas. This is because after that step, you don’t bake this recipe so the frying is necessary (despite any outcries against frying).
That’s right – you do not need to bake the chicken enchiladas with mole. Just make sure your mole sauce and chicken are both hotand obviously the tortillas will be hot so
If you for some reason want to bake them, you can bake them at 375F for 15 minutes. However, I find that baking them can cause them to fall apart more easily so I don’t bake.
You need to use corn tortillas. I recommend using 4 to 5-inch corn tortillas. I do not recommend flour tortillas.
Store bought shredded rotisserie chicken is my favorite option although you can make your own chicken and then shred it if you like. You can also use leftover chicken if you have quite a bit on hand.
When it comes to garnishes, more is more in my book, always.Mexican crema for me is preferred to sour cream because it’s lighter and less gloppy. You can thin out American-style sour cream with a drizzle of milk.
I like queso fresco because it’s nice and salty, light and crumbly, and just gives extra oomph to Mexican recipes like this one. However, another shredded cheese is fine, although wouldn’t be very traditional. In Mexico it’s queso fresco or nada.
For a flavor twist, you can use seasoned and cooked ground beef in the enchiladas instead of chicken. Follow the beef filling mixture recipe I use in Cheesy Beef Taquitos.
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4.41 from 5 votes
Mole Sauce
By Averie Sunshine
Mole Sauce – Making homemade mole is an act of love but worth every second because of the incredible depth of flavor! The combination of dried chiles, tomatoes, spices, cinnamon, chocolate, and peanut butter is absolute savory-sweet-smoky-slightly spicy perfection! Learn how to make traditional mole sauce that's so authentic tasting!
Prep Time: 20 minutes minutes
Cook Time: 3 hours hours
Total Time: 3 hours hours 20 minutes minutes
Servings: 8 cups
Ingredients
- 8 dried mulato chiles, deseeded
- 8 dried pasilla chiles, deseeded
- 1 to 3 dried chiles de arbol, , deseeded; optional but at least 1 is recommended
- ⅓ cup raisins
- 1 corn tortilla, toasted
- 1 packet or tube of Ritz crackers, about 24 crackers, toasted
- 2 slices white bread, toasted
- 1 teaspoon Mexican oregano, regular oregano may be substituted
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon dried cloves
- 2 tomatillos, husked removed and quartered
- 2 Roma tomatoes, quartered
- ½ of a medium white onion, peeled and sliced into 2 large pieces
- 3 whole cloves garlic, peeled
- ½ cup pumpkin seeds
- 3 to 4 cups chicken broth, divided (I use reduced sodium)
- one 3-ounce tablet Abuelita chocolate
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter
Instructions
To a small sauce pan, add the deseeded mulato chiles, pasilla chiles, optional chiles de arbol (these are spicy so add as desired), cover with water, bring to a boil, and cook for 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the chiles sit in the water to soak for 15 minutes; set aside.* (See Notes)
To a small bowl, add the raisins, cover with very hot tap water, and let them soak for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, to a small skillet add the tortilla and toast it until very dry and lightly browned, flip once. Add it to the canister of a high-speed blender; set aside.
Toast the Ritz Crackers in the same dry skillet until they are lightly browned, flip each cracker once. Add them to the blender; set aside.
Toast the white bread in a toaster, add it to the blender; set aside.
To the same dry skillet, add the Mexican oregano, cinnamon, cloves, and toast for about 30 seconds to bring out the flavor; add the mixture to the blender; set aside.
Preheat your broiler to 500F or high, add the tomatillos, tomatoes, onions, and garlic to a sheet pan, and broil for about 3 to 5 minutes, or until slightly blackened. Tip – Since all broilers vary vastly in their intensity, keep a very close eye on your food and don't get distracted. Add the blackened vegetables to the blender; set aside.
Place the pumpkin seeds on the same sheet pan and broil for 1 to 2 minutes and then add them to the blender.
Add 1 to 2 cups of chicken broth, and blend on high until very smooth.
Transfer this smooth mixture to a medium saucepan and cook over medium-low heat; set aside to simmer. No need to wash our your blender, just set it aside.
Meanwhile remove the chiles and raisins from the soaking water (if they soaked a bit longer than called for, that is fine), add them to the blender, add the Abuelita chocolate tablet, and blend all ingredients on high for 4 minutes. Note – The residual hot soaking water inside the chiles and raisins is all you need to blend and soften the chiles and chocolate; you don't need to add broth during this step.
Transfer this chile and chocolate mixture to the saucepan, add the peanut butter, add 2 cups broth, salt, pepper, stir to combine, and allow the mole to simmer over low for about 2 hours**(See Notes); stir intermittently. Note – It's okay to let the mole simmer for many more hours, simply keep an eye on it and stir it intermittently so it doesn't stick, and make sure to add additional broth or water as necessary if it's becoming too thick. Finished mole should have the consistency of gravy.
Extra mole will keep airtight in the fridge for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Tip – You can freeze it in smaller freezer-safe containers or smaller ziplocks rather than in one big block to make it faster to thaw and easier to only thaw what you will use for a particular dish or meal.
Notes
*Make sure toread over the recipe at least once before you begin!This should be obvious but you’d be surprised.
For the chiles, you need to remove the seeds. I find it easiest to use a kitchen scissors, cut them open vertically, scape out the seeds, and plop them in water.
You will have various thingssoaking.Namely the chiles and raisins.
And various thingstoastedlike the tortilla, crackers, and bread.
Plus ingredients tobroilsuch as the tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, garlic, and later the pumpkin seeds.
Ultimately it all getsblended and then simmered.
**Mole needs to simmer for awhile to really get the flavor you want.I like to prepare minehours in advance and keep it simmeringon the back of the stove over very low heat.
Make sure tostir it from time to time and add broth or wateras needed.
To take the guesswork out of it, as well as for getting great prices,I order all my dried chiles on Amazonand I linked to all of them above as well as in the recipe card.
Nutrition
Serving: 1, Calories: 71kcal, Carbohydrates: 9g, Protein: 3g, Fat: 3g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g, Cholesterol: 3mg, Sodium: 382mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 5g
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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