Poblano Peppers stuffed with quinoa and black beans, smothered in the most flavorful sauce called Mole Negro- a rich, dark and complex Mole Sauce. Vegan-adaptable!
Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not. ~Mooji ~
Here’s a delicious recipe for a vegetarian Stuffed Poblano with Mole Negro Sauce. The sauce is dreamy – deep, complex, spicy, sweet and sensual.
What is Mole Negro?
Mole Negro if unfamiliar, originates from Oaxaca and is basically a rich, dark, luscious sauce, made with dried chilies, nuts or seeds & dried fruit like raisins or prunes, and a whisper of dark chocolate adding depth and a hint of sweetness. It is often served with chicken but today we are using it as the flavorful sauce for Stuffed Poblanos!
How to make Stuffed Poblano Chilies (in a nutshell)!
Poblano Chilies are first roasted then stuffed with a simple mixture of quinoa, black beans, and a little goat cheese (optional), baked, then topped with the warm Mole Negro Sauce. It’s a special dish that does require a little extra time and a few pots and pans, but it is quite doable, worth it, and totally swoon-worthy.
Either make this recipe in stages or make this on a day you feel like spending time in the kitchen, like on a Sunday. Play your favorite music. Take your time and enjoy the creative process of cooking. Feel the love in your heart and infuse it into the sauce – it will, I promise make all the difference.
It’s a lovely dish for entertaining and the stuffed poblanos and sauce can both be made ahead. Make sure to read the instructions all the way through before starting.
The sauce starts with browning the onions and then browning the spices, giving the sauce delicious depth. Use dried, dark, yet mild chilies like Pasilla Negros or if you can track these harder-to-find chilies down, Chilhuacle Negros are a great option.
The darker the chilies the darker the sauce, but pay careful attention to heat levels. Using several different chilies creates more complexity in the sauce, but if in a pinch one type is fine.
Stuff the roasted poblanos with a mixture of quinoa (or rice) and black beans and a little goat cheese for creaminess. You can also keep them vegan by leaving the cheese out.
An easy way to tackle this recipe is to make it in stages.
You could pre-cook the quinoa ahead and roast the poblanos ahead.
You could also stuff the peppers ahead if you like, then refrigerate, and warm before serving.
You could also make the Mole Negro ahead and warm it up before serving over the stuffed chilies. The sauce gets better and better with time, so making ahead is a great idea here.
Hope you enjoy these stuffed poblano chilies and the Mole Negro Sauce.
Have a beautiful week!
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Stuffed Poblano Chili with Mole Negro
- Prep Time: 75 mins
- Cook Time: 60 mins
- Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
- Category: Main, vegetarian,
- Method: stove top
- Cuisine: Mexican
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
A delicious recipe for Stuffed Poblano Peppers with a deep and flavorful Mole Negro Sauce. The Poblanos are stuffed with black beans and quinoa (or rice) and optional goat cheese, making this vegan adaptable and gluten-free. Read the recipe all the way through- you may want to make this in stages -Mole, quinoa and roasting peppers ahead, assemble and bake the next day. There are a few steps here- but super delicious!
Ingredients
Mole Negro Sauce:
- 3 dried ancho chilies, seeds and stem removed, crumbled
- 3 dried pasilla negro chiles, seeds and stem removed, crumbled
- 3 cups water or broth, more to the desired consistancy
- 3/4 cup seedless prunes (or raisins)
- 1 large onion- diced
- 5 garlic cloves- smashed
- 2 teaspoons chili powder
- 2 teaspoons cumin (ground or seeds)
- 1 teaspoon coriander (ground or seeds)
- 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1–2 canned chipotle peppers, plus 1 tablespoon adobo sauce ( the “juice” from chipotle can)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, more to taste
- 1/4 cup peanut butter (or sub tahini, almond butter, cashew butter)
- 1 ounce dark bittersweet chocolate
4-6 large poblano peppers, roasted, blackened or charred
Filling:
- 1 cup cooked quinoa (or rice)
- 1 cup cooked black beans
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin and coriander
- 4 – 6 tablespoons goat cheese (optional- you can leave this out, but it adds nice creaminess)
- Garnish- toasted sesame seeds, cilantro
Instructions
- Set quinoa to cook.
- Make Mole Negro: In a small pot, place the crumbled dried chilies and cover with the 3 cups or broth. Bring to a boil, turn heat down to low and simmer covered, 10 minutes. Add prunes, stir, cover, simmer 10 more minutes, turn heat off, let cool saving the liquid.
- In a saute pan, saute the onions and garlic in 2 tablespoons olive oil, over medium heat, stirring often until deeply golden brown, about 10-15 minutes. Take your time here and let them darken. Add the spices (cumin, coriander, cinnamon, chili powder) and saute 1-2 more minutes, toasting the spices. You can also use whole spices.
- Place the cooked onion mixture in a blender along with the chilies and prunes and all the liquid, 1-2 chipotles and the adobo sauce. Blend until smooth, scraping down sides, adding just enough water to get the blender going (you may not need to add more). Once very smooth, pour this back into the pot and heat over low heat, covering. When warm, stir in the salt, peanut butter and chocolate. Once the chocolate is melted, taste and add more salt and pepper to taste. Add more heat of you like. As it simmers on low the flavor will continue to develop. It should taste deep and smokey, slightly salty and sweet. If bland, salt may help bring out the other flavors. Simmer on very low heat 10 minutes.
- Blacken and blister the fresh poblanos over a gas flame – or broil in the oven, turning often, until skin begins to blister and darken on most sides. Place peppers in a bowl, cover with foil, and let steam 10-15 minutes. Gently, run the peppers under cool water and peel skin off being careful to keep the pepper intact. Cut a vertical slit in the pepper and leaving stem intact, remove seeds with your fingers, rinsing the inside Set on a paper towel, pat dry and place on a greased sheet pan.
- Preheat oven to 400F
- Make the filling: In a small bowl, mix the cooked quinoa and black beans together, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste, adding cumin and coriander.
- Assemeble Fill the peppers halfway with the quinoa-black bean mixture. Add a tablespoon of goat cheese (optional, but delicious) then cover with more quinoa-black bean mixture, so the goat cheese is in the middle, like a sweet surprise. Place in a greased baking dish or sheet pan. Heat them in a warm oven (20 mins) or microwave. (You can also make these ahead and refrigerate at this point.) When heated all the way through and goat cheese melts, spoon the flavorful warm mole negro sauce over top.
- Sprinkle with sesame seeds and cilantro and serve. Enjoy!
Notes
- Depending on the size of your Poblanos, you may want to serve 1 per person or 2 person if very small. You will end up with extra sauce, to use later- this can be frozen as well.
- Using several different chilies to the MOLE adds complexity- but you can also stick with one. Be mindful of the chili’s heat level. I prefer using milder darker chilies, you can always add heat, but it’s not as easy to take it away. Dried chilies usually have a heat meter ( 1-10) on the package, so I try to keep this around an average of 5.
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 507
- Sugar: 27.1 g
- Sodium: 1301.8 mg
- Fat: 17.1 g
- Saturated Fat: 5.8 g
- Carbohydrates: 75.4 g
- Fiber: 17 g
- Protein: 17.3 g
- Cholesterol: 7 mg
Awesome mole sauce! I added whole pumpkin seeds, pistachios and cashews to replace peanut butter and didn’t have any dried chilies, but the chipotles gave enough heat. Deep rich sauce, was delicious over the poblanos roasted in the oven (was too cold to bbq). Will save this recipe!! Compared to other mole recipes online, even though this was quite involved, still seemed easier than most.
Thanks Yolande!
We absolutely loved this dish! The mole was delicious, the complexity and subtle heat kept us taking bite after bite until we were completely overstuffed. We served with the Mexican papaya salad which was also delicious and cooling. Thanks for the wonderful recipe.
Glad you enjoyed this Lori! I love this sauce!
We made this tonight and couldn’t be more pleased with the results. Savory, touch spicy and smoky and just absolutely delicious. Substituted prunes with dates (Coachella Valley must!). Thank you for always coming through with an amazing recipe! Can’t wait until we can share with friends at a dinner party in our hopefully not too far future.
Thanks Jill, glad you liked this one!
What a lovely surprise to have such a simple method to make mole return such wonderful flavors! I make mole, both negro and rojo, from time to time and they are typically hours long affairs. This recipe has definitely made it to the “keeper file” and will be used often. We ended up using brown rice instead of quinoa along with the black beans and goat cheese. For the mole, I made it a day ahead of time and it while it was great for flavor day of making, it was really great for flavor the next day with the dish. Leftover mole will go on avocado slices wrapped in warm corn tortillas – talk about an upgrade from avocado toast for breakfast, and on roasted sweet potato cubes and…the uses for good mole like this are limitless. (Including eating it with a spoon which I was doing yesterday when my husband told me to “knock it off”. 🙂
I have not used prunes before – typically it is raisins either black or golden – and I really liked the prunes here.
Also, for ingredient modifications over the as written:
* I used only one chipotle and no extra adobo sauce. Not because I was concerned about heat level but that proportionally with the other peppers I thought the smokey quality offered by chipotle would work better for the tastebuds in my household.
*And I used my “go to” chocolate for mole which is the Mexican chocolate sold by Rancho Gordo. Since it comes in rounds easy to cut in half, I used a half round which is 1.3 oz.
*I added a little sugar at the last simmer point, tasted and added to taste so maybe 1 tsp or +. And next time I think I’ll add in a clove or two or a pinch of ground along with the other spices at the onion step..
As for technique:
*Thanks for the tip on getting the onions nice and dark. That took about 20 minutes for me.
*And since I had the time, I let the dried peppers simmer about 20 minutes to start then added in the prunes for the additional ten.
*Also, after using the pepper simmering water for the pureeing in a blender and adding it back to the saucepan to simmer to round out flavors, when I added the chocolate and nut butter (I used a mix of tahini and peanut butter) I tasted at this point to add sugar too and then I let it go about 30 – 40 minutes (rather than 10 since I had the time). I found it needed a good amount of water to get the texture to where I wanted it to be. Because as a last step I strained this all well, pushing it with the back of a ladle through a mesh strainer, so that it would be velvety smooth. That is a consistency I just can’t get with a blender or food processor so I always strain mole at the final step.
Thanks again for such a great recipe and gorgeous photos for the plating. Ours looked like the photo when we plated it and that is always such fun for a home cook.
Thanks so much for your detailed feedback and for sharing your adjustments! So happy you liked it.
A local farmer had lovely poblanos at their barn stand yesterday. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them this time but bought four. My husband and I eat a largely plant based diet (and are choosy about source of animal proteins when we do use them) and he said something quinoa sounded good to him to fill these. Eureka…this recipe sounds perfect to me! I love making mole so off we go to try this this week. I’ll check back in in a few days after I’ve used the recipe. In the meantime, just a note to say thanks so much for taking the time to create it and post the beautiful photos to share.
Thanks so much, Michelle. I would love to hear how you like the recipe. I haven’t made it in a while and curious if it needs adjusting. Thanks!!!
We all licked our plates. Best Mole we’ve ever had.
I think I died and went to heaven. Not a fast recipe- requires patience and a little time. I think it actually took me 2 1/4 hours but I made this on a sunday and wasn’t in a hurry. Swoon worthy for sure.
I have to admit I was a little skeptical bout this recipe- lots of steps but in the end, it was totally worth it. The sauce is a masterpiece. Everyone raved.
I love making mole. Anytime I get to cook with chocolate is a treat, especially when creating savory sauces like this one. I’ve only made mole once, so I think it’s time a try it again. These Stuffed peppers look scrumptious.
Thanks Mary! I hope you give it a try! It’s a good one.
Delicious dish and beautiful pictures!
Thank you Carlos! Appreciate it so much!