chocolate chicken mole meatloaf

Normally, at the conclusion of the themed food videos for each month, I make a tofu meatloaf and use most of the recipes I've made for that month in the meatloaf. But the idea of a chicken mole meatloaf sounded appealing to me and I still got to use some of the chocolate bread I made last week for another video.

I normally buy my sauces for my meatloaves premade but there really aren't any good ones you can get online(and besides, I wouldn't know if the jars of mole sauce would be delivered in time to record the video). So I made my own mole sauce. But in my research for finding a mole sauce recipe, I noticed that a lot of the sauces needed to be simmered for hours and with my day job, I don't have the time for simmering sauces for such a lengthy amount of time. So I managed to find the inspirations for my recipes, http://www.spicesinc.com/p-2290-mole-sauce.aspx and http://www.momswhothink.com/recipes/dinner-recipes/easy-mole-sauce-recipe.html.

You might be wondering why I used 2 sources of inspiration for one sauce. I used most of the needed ingredients from the first link and in place of chicken broth that I didn't have, I used tomato sauce(which is what the recipe in the second link used).

Traditionally the chocolate used in a mole recipe is either dark chocolate or pure 100% chocolate, which is bitter. I wanted the sauce to be a little sweet so I used semisweet chocolate instead. I couldn't find dried chiles where I'm from so i used chili pepper flakes instead.

The sauce itself tastes a tad sweet at first but then you get the spicy kick in your mouth(it's not super spicy, but it's spicy enough to need a sip of water).

If you looked at my Chocolate Bread video, you may notice it is a sweet bread recipe because it uses dark chocolate chips in the bread. Again, I wanted to offset the spiciness of the meatloaf with sweetness.

And that's the taste of the final product(the meatloaf). In fact, my dad said it tasted like a dish he would find at a restaurant! :)

That compliment means a lot coming from this picky eater, yet he said the thought of having chocolate for dinner is still unappealing for him. Chocolate can be savory, people!

I didn't want the meatloaf to be bland so I used most of the spices I included in the mole sauce into the meatloaf(except for the chili pepper flakes, because I forgot to include them in the meatloaf, but maybe that's a good thing considering the meatloaf is already moderately spicy).

You will need:

For the cooking equipment:

A frying pan
A medium saucepan
A large bowl
A lasagna pan
Nonstick cooking spray

For the chocolate mole sauce:

1 diced onion
1 tbsp. of dried chili pepper flakes
Olive oil for sautéing
1/2 tbsp. of garlic powder
Pinch of oregano
Pinch of cumin
Pinch or parsley flakes
Pinch of paprika
Pinch of cinnamon
1 tbsp. of cocoa powder
1 tbsp. of all-purpose flour(for thickening the sauce)
1 cup of tomato sauce
2 ounces of semisweet baking chocolate

For the meatloaf itself:

2/3 tbsp. of onion powder
2 beaten and whisked eggs
1/2 cup of the chocolate mole sauce(see needed ingredients above)
Pinch of garlic powder
Pinch of oregano
Pinch of cumin
Pinch of parsley flakes
Pinch of paprika
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of black pepper
Pinch of salt
1 cup of crumbled up chocolate bread(link for the creation of the chocolate bread is:
1 pound of ground chicken
Any remaining mole sauce to top the finished meatloaves

For the sauce:

1. Pour olive oil into a frying pan. Heat the oil up.
2. Once the oil is heated up, put the onion and chili pepper flakes into the frying pan. Saute the onion and chili pepper flakes for 15-30 seconds. You don't want to burn the onion!!
3. Put the next 9 sauce ingredients into the frying pan. Mix everything together until you get a nice paste.
4. Shut the heat off and put the paste into the medium saucepan. Add the tomato sauce and bring the paste/sauce to a boil. Stir the contents of the saucepan as the sauce is boiling.
5. Once the sauce is boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover the saucepan with a lid and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
6. Remove the saucepan from the stove after 20 minutes and add the semisweet baking chocolate. I advise you cut your baking chocolate into either small pieces or chocolate shavings. Mix the chocolate into the sauce until all the chocolate melts.


This sauce recipe makes 3/4 cups of sauce.

For the meatloaf:

1. Put the first two meatloaf ingredients into a large bowl.
2. Measure a 1/2 cup of the chocolate mole sauce and put that amount into the large bowl.
3. Put the next 10 meatloaf ingredients into the large bowl.
4. Mix all the ingredients up until everything is distributed evenly among the meatloaf mixture.
5. Spray a lasagna pan with nonstick cooking spray.
6. Form 2 loaves.
7. Bake in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 60-65 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the meatloaf reaches 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
8. Top the meatloaves with the remaining chocolate mole sauce.
9. Bon appetit!