Chef Lupita
Adobo de Puerco Poblano
Puebla's weekday adobo of pork shoulder braised in a thick guajillo and ancho sauce sharpened with vinegar, cumin, and clove. The deep red of a market spice stall, the dish a poblana cooks without thinking.
Culinary Explorer
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Encacahuatado de Cerdo
Created by
Hidalgo's everyday peanut mole, pork simmered in toasted peanuts and chile guajillo until the sauce turns silky and earth-dark, spooned over white rice the way they eat it in the maguey country.
Main Dishes
Mexican
Comfort Food
Weeknight
25 min
Active Time
1 hr 30 min cook•1 hr 55 min total
Yield6 servings
Encacahuatado is from Hidalgo and Tlaxcala. The maguey country. The states people skip on their way somewhere else, and that is their loss, because the cooking there carries some of the most honest mole work in the country. This is not the baroque mole of Puebla. This is the weekday mole, the one a mother makes after the market on Tuesday, the one that feeds a family on a budget and never announces itself as fancy.
The sauce is built on cacahuates, peanuts, toasted with their skins on a dry comal until the kitchen smells like the brazier outside a mercado. Peanuts are pre-Columbian, native to the Americas, and Mexico has been cooking with them for centuries. The mistake outsiders make is treating this like a Thai peanut sauce. It is not. There is no soy, no ginger, no sweetness. There is chile guajillo for color and a clean fruit-and-tannin heat, chile ancho for sweetness and depth, canela and clove for a quiet warmth in the back of the mouth, and the char of comal-blackened tomato and onion holding the whole thing together. The skins on the peanuts matter. They give the sauce its earth color and a bitter edge that keeps the richness in check.
My mother did not cook this dish. It is not jalisciense. I learned it from a senora named Doña Tomasa in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, who fed me a bowl of it from a clay cazuela on a Tuesday in 2014 and watched me eat the whole thing without saying a word. When I asked her for the recipe she handed me a peeled garlic clove and pointed at her comal. That was the lesson. You stand at the comal. You toast. You char. You blend, you strain, you fry the sauce in lard until it darkens. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to the maguey country. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
The peanut (cacahuate, from the Nahuatl 'tlalcacahuatl,' meaning earth-cacao) is indigenous to South America and was cultivated across Mesoamerica long before contact, with archaeological evidence of peanut consumption in central Mexico dating to the Classic period. Encacahuatado belongs to a broader family of pre-Hispanic seed and nut sauces, alongside pipian (built on pumpkin seed) and almendrado (built on almond, a colonial addition), that predate the chocolate-and-spice moles now associated with Puebla and Oaxaca. The dish remained a rural and working-class staple of Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, and parts of the State of Mexico through the 20th century, served over rice or with pork or chicken on weekdays, and was largely overlooked by mid-century cookbook authors who fixated on the more elaborate moles of the southern states.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
bone-in pork shoulder
Quantity
2 1/2 pounds
cut into 2-inch chunks
white onion
Quantity
1 medium
half left whole, half roughly chopped
garlic cloves
Quantity
4
2 whole for broth, 2 peeled for the sauce
bay leaves
Quantity
2
kosher salt
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more to taste
raw unsalted peanuts with skins on
Quantity
1 cup
dried chile guajillo
Quantity
6
stemmed and seeded
dried chile ancho
Quantity
2
stemmed and seeded
dried chile chipotle mora (optional)
Quantity
2
stemmed (optional, for smoke and heat)
Roma tomatoes
Quantity
2 medium
Mexican canela (cinnamon)
Quantity
1 stick (3 inches)
whole cloves
Quantity
3
whole black peppercorns
Quantity
5
day-old bolillo or corn tortilla
Quantity
1 (1-inch) piece
torn
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
reserved pork broth
Quantity
3 to 4 cups
cooked white rice (optional)
Quantity
for serving
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
warmed
toasted peanuts (optional)
Quantity
for garnish
roughly chopped
flat-leaf parsley or cilantro (optional)
Quantity
for garnish
chopped
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| bone-in pork shouldercut into 2-inch chunks | 2 1/2 pounds |
| white onionhalf left whole, half roughly chopped | 1 medium |
| garlic cloves2 whole for broth, 2 peeled for the sauce | 4 |
| bay leaves | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 tablespoon, plus more to taste |
| raw unsalted peanuts with skins on | 1 cup |
| dried chile guajillostemmed and seeded | 6 |
| dried chile anchostemmed and seeded | 2 |
| dried chile chipotle mora (optional)stemmed (optional, for smoke and heat) | 2 |
| Roma tomatoes | 2 medium |
| Mexican canela (cinnamon) | 1 stick (3 inches) |
| whole cloves | 3 |
| whole black peppercorns | 5 |
| day-old bolillo or corn tortillatorn | 1 (1-inch) piece |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 2 tablespoons |
| reserved pork broth | 3 to 4 cups |
| cooked white rice (optional) | for serving |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
| toasted peanuts (optional)roughly chopped | for garnish |
| flat-leaf parsley or cilantro (optional)chopped | for garnish |
Equipment Needed
- •Cast iron comal or heavy dry skillet for toasting
- •Heavy 5-quart pot or clay cazuela
- •High-powered blender
- •Fine-mesh sieve
- •Wooden spoon
Instructions
- 1
Simmer the pork
Put the pork shoulder in a heavy pot and cover with cold water by two inches. Add the whole half onion, the two whole garlic cloves, the bay leaves, and the salt. Bring up to a slow simmer over medium heat. Skim the gray foam in the first fifteen minutes. Lower the heat and cook at a lazy bubble for one hour and fifteen minutes, until the pork is tender but not falling apart. Lift the meat out and reserve. Strain the broth and keep it. The broth is half the sauce.
Cold water start, slow simmer, partial cover. A rolling boil clouds the broth and tightens the meat. There is no fixing a cloudy broth later. - 2
Toast the peanuts
Heat a dry comal or heavy skillet over medium. Add the peanuts in a single layer. Toast them, shaking the pan, for about six to eight minutes, until the skins darken and the kitchen smells like a peanut vendor's brazier outside a mercado. Move them to a plate to stop the cooking. Reserve a small handful for garnish. The skins stay on. They give the sauce its earth color and a bitter edge that keeps the peanut from going cloying. This is encacahuatado, not peanut butter sauce.
- 3
Toast the chiles and spices
On the same comal, toast the guajillo and ancho chiles separately, about 20 to 30 seconds per side. They should puff and turn fragrant, never blacken. If you are using chile chipotle mora, toast it the same way. Move them to a heatproof bowl and cover with hot tap water, not boiling. Soak twenty minutes. In the last minute on the comal, toast the canela, cloves, and peppercorns until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Set aside.
Burned chile is bitter chile. If one goes black, throw it out. No me vengas con atajos. - 4
Char the tomatoes and onion
Raise the comal heat to medium-high. Char the whole Roma tomatoes, the chopped onion, and the two peeled garlic cloves, turning them, until the tomato skins blister and split and the onion picks up dark edges, about six to eight minutes. The char is not a mistake. It is the smoky backbone of the sauce.
- 5
Blend the sauce
Drain the soaked chiles. Put them in the blender with the toasted peanuts (minus the reserved garnish), the charred tomatoes, onion, and garlic, the toasted canela, cloves, peppercorns, the torn bolillo or tortilla, and one and a half cups of the reserved pork broth. Blend on high for two full minutes, until the sauce is completely smooth and silky. Pass it through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, pressing on the solids. Discard what stays in the strainer. The strainer step is not optional. It is the difference between a velvet encacahuatado and a gritty one.
- 6
Fry the sauce in lard
Melt the manteca in a wide heavy pot or cazuela over medium heat until it shimmers. Pour in the strained sauce. It will sputter. Stand back and stir. Cook for eight to ten minutes, stirring almost constantly with a wooden spoon, until the color deepens from rust to a darker brick red and the lard starts to bead at the edges. La manteca es el sabor. This is the step that turns a blender puree into a mole.
If the sauce thickens too fast and starts to stick, add a half cup of pork broth and keep going. You are looking for color and depth, not dryness. - 7
Simmer the pork in the sauce
Add the reserved pork pieces back to the pot and pour in another one and a half to two cups of pork broth, enough so the sauce coats the meat and moves like heavy cream when you stir. Bring to a gentle simmer. Cook uncovered for fifteen to twenty minutes, stirring occasionally so the bottom does not catch. The sauce will reduce slightly and cling to the pork. Taste for salt now. Encacahuatado needs to be assertive on salt because it is rich. A timid salt makes the peanut sit heavy on the tongue.
- 8
Serve over white rice
Spoon the pork and a generous ladle of sauce over white rice in a shallow bowl or a barro plate. Scatter the reserved chopped peanuts and a little parsley over the top. Serve with warm corn tortillas on the side. The rice is not a side. It is the canvas the sauce was made to cover. Así se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Buy raw peanuts with the red skins on. The skins are not a defect. They carry tannins that balance the fat of the peanut and give the sauce its earth color. Roasted or blanched peanuts will give you a pale, flat sauce that tastes like a snack bar.
- •Pork shoulder is the right cut. Pork loin will dry out and leave you with sauce around shoe leather. If you want to use chicken instead, use bone-in thighs, never breast. Encacahuatado needs the fat of the cut to balance the richness of the sauce.
- •The strainer step is the difference between professional and homemade. The blender will not break the peanut skins down completely. Push the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve and discard what is left. If you skip this, you will feel it on your tongue.
- •Encacahuatado is better the next day. The peanut and the chile marry overnight and the sauce thickens into something even more serious. Make it on Sunday, eat it on Monday.
Advance Preparation
- •The sauce can be made one day ahead through the frying step and refrigerated separately from the cooked pork. Reheat together with extra broth on serving day. The flavor only deepens.
- •The pork broth can be made one day ahead and refrigerated, with the fat layer on top left in place to seal it. Skim before using.
- •Encacahuatado keeps refrigerated for four days. It does not freeze well, the peanut sauce breaks and turns grainy on the thaw.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 470g)
Calories
780 calories
Total Fat
50 g
Saturated Fat
14 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
33 g
Cholesterol
105 mg
Sodium
830 mg
Total Carbohydrates
50 g
Dietary Fiber
7 g
Sugars
3 g
Protein
38 g
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