Best Store Bought Mole Sauce We Found in a Taste Test

Finding the best mole sauce at the grocery store is a tall order. Believe me—I tried. Mole comes in a wide variety of colors, flavors, and styles, but the bulk of what you’ll find at the grocery store is the dark brownish-red kind that consists of chile peppers, nuts and seeds, and cocoa. And most of it comes in the form of a paste that needs to be reconstituted with chicken broth or water. For the most part, those mole pastes need additional dressing up in order for them to resemble the rich, creamy mole sauce you’d find in a Mexican restaurant (for instance, this recipe calls for peanut butter and Mexican hot chocolate).

What I wanted to find was mole sauce that’s ready to roll right out of the jar or carton. Mole sauce that approximates a creamy, dreamy, savory-sweet mole sauce you can simply mix with some shredded chicken for chicken mole tacos, or dump over a plate of chicken thighs and rice and call it a day. I tried a handful of nationally available brands and only found one I thought was good enough to rank. If you’re reading this and you have suggestions, do drop them in the comments; we’re always updating our rankings and would be thrilled to update this list with more options. But in the meantime, this is the best store bought mole sauce we found.

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Rogelio Bueno Ready to Serve Mole Sauce: Rogelio Bueno mole sauce tastes good. It’s complex—nutty and savory and just a touch bitter. You can tell it actually contains cocoa, along with toasty sesame seeds and dried peppers. It has a good amount of heat, too, which I really loved. A lot of the prepared mole sauce we taste tested, whether it came in a jar or a carton, just didn’t have the right mix of flavors. Some had way too much cumin. Others tasted more like jerk sauce than mole sauce. If you slow cook this in a skillet with some chicken thighs, it’s going to fulfill a craving. It may not be the best mole sauce in the world and it may not live up to what you’re used to being served at your favorite Mexican restaurant (I live in Los Angeles! I’ve eaten at Guelaguetza, the city’s most famous Oaxacan restaurant! Believe me, I get it!), but it’s the best store bought mole sauce we’ve found so far.

Other products we tried: 365 Mole Negro, Doña Maria Mole Sauce (paste), Doña Maria Ready to Serve Mole Sauce, La Costeña Hot Mole (paste), Aplenty Mole

About the Author

Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks. Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction. Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home. Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.