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I made an Oaxacan-style mole and went too heavy with the cinnamon stick. That flavor is now too prevalent. How can I fix this?

I was thinking about adding some chicken stock and tomato sauce. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

BobMcGee
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lawrence
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  • In terms of simply diluting it, stock, tomato, and onion are reasonably good bets - but they'll dilute the other flavors too. – Cascabel Jul 29 '11 at 01:38

3 Answers3

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Clove or allspice can take it nicely over the top; sage and oregano can tame it.

This approach means to simply adjust the flavors of the sauce. Basically, if the problem you are having is that cinnamon is to cinnamon-y and distinct relative to taste, you can apply a flavor blur with neighboring spices (the clove, allspice, coriander, cardamom, cumin etc). If the problem is that you are finding that neighborhood of flavor to intense, you can round the palate by adding the herbs.

The other route would be re-scaling the sauce. Adding stock, oil/fat, peppers/onions, chocolate disks/cocoa, or other ratio constituents means you would need to re-up on the other constituents as it may throw off the sauce's viscosity. This may be preferable if you simply can't stand the cinnamon or its neighbors; or if balancing the spice/herbs would make the sauce too noisy.

mfg
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I might increase the cocoa powder a bit (assuming that this is a mole that calls for chocolate). Cinnamon is perceived as sweet, so my thought is that additional bitter chocolate might help neutralize it. This is speculation though, I've never tried it.

Michael Natkin
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Cinnamon and cumin work as opposites in this sort of situation. You can reduce the perceived cinnamon by adding a bit of cumin, and vice versa.

Martha F.
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