What's on the Grill #280: Mystery Mole Chicken Tacos

Note to self: take better notes.  No, scratch that, take notes.  Period.  In the midst of a crazy summer schedule, I cranked out these Mole, Chipotle, and Tequila chicken tacos a few weeks ago.  Mole is a chili pepper and chocolate-based sauce.  I've never cooked with it before, so I was excited to try something new.  

Now here comes the irritating part.  I forgot where I found the original recipe inspiration and didn't take one note on the ingredients.  I've scoured all of my cookbooks, Evernote, the web…nothing.  All I did was take pictures.  Fail.

So, although this is a "What's on the Grill" post, it's going to be partly shrouded in mystery.   There is enough motivation here to make this again, which I will have to do.  Even though I've shown my memory sucks, it somehow retained the wonderful taste of these tacos.

Mole Chicken Tacos
Adapted from I've Not a Clue 

I'm going to list ingredients but not measurements, and more than likely, I'm missing ingredients, too.

Chicken
Mole
Tequila
Chipotles - Pureed

Corn tortillas
Avocado
Cilantro
Scallions
Sour Cream
Limes

Chicken

As regular readers know, any time I have a recipe calling for chicken pieces, I start with a whole chicken.  I'm always grilling more chicken than I need for a meal because I know I will eat it in new meals over days following.  This recipe is no different.

Cut up the chicken.  Add salt and pepper.

For the marinade, I used, apparently, a combination of mole, tequila, pureed chipotles in adobo sauce.  

I whisked together several tablespoons of mole, several ounces of tequila and 1 tablespoon of the chipotles.  

The grill was pre-heated to direct medium-high heat.   Once to temp, the chicken was grilled over direct heat.

I always put the legs and thighs down first and then a few minutes later, the breasts, and finally the wings.  The goal is to have all of the chicken come off at the same time.

After the chicken is initially browned, brush the meat during the last several minutes of cooking with half the mole sauce.  Reserve the rest.

With the the tequila, the sauce can burn, so stick around the grill to combat any flareups.

Once the leg and thigh joint moves freely, the chicken is done.  Figure about 20 minutes or so.

While the chicken was cooking, prep the rest of the taco ingredients, which pretty much means dice everything.

Tacos always seem like an easy meal, but truthfully the prep takes awhile.

Dice and shred the chicken you want for the tacos.  Wrap the tortillas in aluminum foil and heat over direct heat for a couple minutes.

Once done, take a tortilla and spread with sour cream and the reserved mole sauce.  Top with chicken avocado, scallions, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime.

Alright, maybe I remembered more than I thought…then again with my luck, I probably left out some magical mystery ingredient.  Nonetheless, the rich earthiness of the mole sauce was spectacular.  I'm going to make and forget these again.