Mulato

• chile mulato

  Spanish

  Distinguished in Mexican shops from ancho by colour, since both are dried poblano and look similar at a glance. Held against the light, ancho shows red and mulato shows brown.

Sweet and dark, with chocolate, liquorice and dried-fruit notes and a smoky finish. Mild in heat and substantial in body — the thick flesh purées into a sauce and thickens it, which is a large part of why mole is built on chillies of this kind.

Deep and sweet, with liquorice, dried cherry, tobacco and a definite smokiness. Richer and darker than ancho, which smells brighter and more of raisin.

Very dark brown to near-black, wrinkled and matte. Held against a light the flesh reads brown, where ancho reads mahogany red — the single reliable way to tell them apart.

Thick-fleshed, soft and pliable rather than brittle. It rehydrates readily and purées to a smooth heavy paste, unlike the tough-skinned guajillo which has to be strained.

• Capsaicin — Present at low levels; this is not a chilli chosen for pungency.
• Sugars and Maillard products — Concentrated by the long ripening and slow drying, and the source of the sweetness and much of the dark colour.
• Carotenoids — Degraded further by the extended ripening, which is why the pod is brown rather than red.

Toast, soak, blend, then fry the purée — and it is the last step that outsiders skip. Wipe the pods, tear them open and discard the stem and most of the seeds, toast for a few seconds a side on a dry pan until they smell sweet, soak in hot water until soft, and blend. The soaking water carries bitterness along with flavour, so use it sparingly or not at all. Frying the blended sauce in fat before liquid goes in is what turns it from raw and sharp to round, and no amount of simmering substitutes for it. Buy for the dish rather than for the cupboard: these thick pods are pliable rather than brittle, they hold moisture, and they are the chillies here most likely to mould if kept warm and damp. And check the light test before cooking — a mole made with two anchos and no mulato is a different sauce, and the bag will not tell you.

Mole above all, and the long-cooked sauces around it. Mulato is toasted, soaked and blended with ancho and pasilla into mole poblano, and it appears in adobos, stews and braises where a dark sweet chilli base is wanted. It suits turkey, chicken, pork, chocolate, sesame, raisins and tomato, and it sits with cinnamon, cloves, allspice and cumin rather than with the bright citrus register. Its particular contribution to a sauce is sweetness and body together, and heat that stays out of the way even when a dozen pods go in.

• toasting — A short toast on a dry comal wakes the aroma and is standard before soaking. Thick flesh gives a little more margin than a thin pod does, but scorching still turns the sauce bitter and the sugars here burn readily.
• infusing — Toasted pods are soaked in hot water until soft, then blended. The soaking liquid carries bitterness as well as flavour and is generally discarded or used sparingly.
• frying — The blended purée is fried in fat before liquid is added — the step that turns a raw sauce into a cooked one, and the one most often skipped outside Mexico.

Bend a pod and smell it. A good mulato is supple and bends without cracking, and smells sweetly of liquorice and dried fruit. One that snaps is over-dried and will not rehydrate properly; one that smells musty rather than sweet has been stored damp.

• Pods that snap rather than bend.
• A musty or sour smell in place of the sweet liquorice note.
• Visible mould, which means discard.
• White or grey bloom, which needs checking — sugar bloom is harmless and mould is not.
• Fine powder or small holes, meaning pantry insects.

Buy whole pods, and here the reason is structural rather than aromatic. Mole and the adobos built on these chillies get their body from rehydrated flesh — the pod is toasted, soaked, blended and then fried, and the resulting purée thickens the sauce. A powder contributes the flavour and none of the thickening, so a sauce built from it comes out thin and has to be corrected some other way. The whole pod also keeps better, and it is the only form in which the light test that distinguishes mulato from ancho can be done at all, which matters because the trade does not certify that distinction.

• Hold a pod to a light: mulato reads brown through the flesh and ancho reads mahogany red. This is the only reliable way to tell them apart and shops mislabel them.
• Supple and pliable, bending without cracking.
• A sweet liquorice-and-dried-fruit smell rather than a musty one.
• Whole pods rather than powder, since the flesh is what thickens a mole.
• Buy for the dish rather than in bulk — these keep less well than thin dried chillies.

No formal grading and, more importantly, no certification of the mulato-versus-ancho distinction anywhere in the trade. Sorting is on size, colour and suppleness. The light test is the buyer’s only real protection against mislabelling.

Solanaceae

A bushy annual bearing broad, heart-shaped fruit that ripen through green to a deep chocolate brown in the strains grown for mulato. Dried, the pod is wide, wrinkled, soft to the touch and very dark — nearly black in poor light.

Mexico, and the state of Puebla in particular, where the poblano takes its name and where the mole tradition that uses this chilli developed.

• MX (Puebla, Zacatecas and Guanajuato) — major producer
• US — notable producer

Left on the plant past red ripeness until the pod turns chocolate brown, then picked and dried. The extra time on the plant is what separates it from ancho.

1. Late picking — Fruit left to ripen beyond red to a deep brown before harvest.Why: The step that makes the chilli mulato rather than ancho. Everything after this is the same.
2. Sun drying — Thick-fleshed pods sun-dried slowly, remaining pliable rather than becoming brittle.Why: Concentrating the sugars. The pliability is characteristic and a mulato that snaps is over-dried or old.
3. Sorting — Graded on size, colour and suppleness.Why: Suppleness is the practical quality signal for the thick-fleshed chillies.

Traded on size, colour and suppleness rather than against a published specification. The distinction from ancho is not certified anywhere, and mislabelling between the two is common enough that the light test is worth doing in the shop.

Grown as an annual, with strains selected for brown rather than red ripening. Whether a crop becomes mulato or ancho is decided by the strain and by how long the fruit is left on the plant, which makes the two products a growing decision rather than a sorting one.

Warm, with a dry season long enough to sun-dry a thick-fleshed pod without it spoiling — a harder requirement than for the thin chillies, and the reason mulato and ancho are more regionally concentrated than árbol.

Inseparable from mole poblano, the dish it is most associated with, and from the Puebla region that gives the poblano its name. The practice of drying the same chilli at two ripenesses to yield two ingredients is an old one and is a good illustration of how Mexican cooking treats chillies: as a palette of processed products rather than as a set of varieties. Its history outside Mexico is short — mulato is the least exported of the three mole chillies and is still hard to buy in much of Europe.

Largely a domestic Mexican trade with a modest export flow, smaller than ancho or guajillo. Because the distinction from ancho is uncertified, exported bags are not always what the label says.

No distinct traditional medicinal tradition is recorded for this chilli as against chillies generally. Held as an absence rather than an omission.