4 blends
Cold jugs
Stirred into cold water and poured over ice.
Blended and packed in Mexico
The afternoon prep inside a dry pouch
We toast the chiles, mill the cacao, and grind the spices in our kitchen. You open the pouch and stir it into cold water or warm it on the stove.
Tres maneras
Three sides of the kitchen
Cold jugs for the middle of the day, hot pots for the evening, and dry mole for dinner.
3 blends
Hot pots
Warmed on the stove, ladled into mugs.
2 blends
Sauce pans
Loosened into broth until the surface shines.
How to pour at home
Open the pouch, pick your pot or jug, and follow the label.
Fill the jug
Scoop the powder into cold water and stir it down. The seeds and ground cinnamon will move around, so drop the ice in after the powder clears.
Warm the pot
Set your pot on the stove for the chocolate, the ponche, or the cafe de la olla. Give it some heat, and strain the ground coffee through a fine mesh.
Work the pan
Spoon the dry mole paste into warm broth in a wide pan. Stir until the paste breaks apart, then let it simmer until the surface shines.
An ounce and a half
of powder to one quart of cold water, which is the band most pouches land in. Stir it into a splash first, then fill the jug.
El mercado
The nine blends
Each pouch holds real ground spices, dried fruit bits, or milled cacao that settle naturally when left to sit on the table.
Cold jug
Agua Fresca Hibiscus Guava
Hibiscus and guava agua fresca with whole chia seeds that swell in cold water to make a deep red drink.
3.4 from 45 ratings
500 g or 1 kg
Cold jug
Agua Fresca Horchata
A cold glass of rice, milk and real cinnamon, sweetened lightly and stirred straight into a jug of water.
3.5 from 12 ratings
1 kg
Cold jug
Agua Fresca Lime and Chia
Tart lime and whole chia seeds stirred cold, modeled on the pale green barrels sitting on crushed ice at the mercado.
1 kg
Cold jug
Agua Fresca Marzipan
Roasted peanut mazapan candy turned into a cold, creamy glass with milk and a quiet hint of coffee behind it.
500 g or 1 kg
Hot pot
Ponche Mexicano
Dried guava, apple pieces, hibiscus and cinnamon blended for a hot pot of traditional winter punch.
4.4 from 16 ratings
500 g or 1 kg
Hot pot
Cafe de la Olla
Real ground coffee spiced with cinnamon and clove, ready to steep in a pot or a French press.
4.1 from 37 ratings
500 g
Hot pot
Mexican Chocolate Chiapas
Ground Chiapas cacao with cinnamon and milk, ready to whisk into a pot of hot milk until the surface foams thick.
500 g or 1 kg
Sauce pan
Mole Oaxaqueno
A dry mole mix of three chiles, cacao and toasted tortilla, ready to stir into hot broth and simmer down.
4.1 from 14 ratings
500 g
Sauce pan
Mole Poblano
A dry mole mix built on toasted tortilla, three chiles and Mexican cacao that simmers into a rich Puebla sauce.
5.0 from 6 ratings
1 kg
How far each pouch goes
Most brands sell a bag and leave you guessing what to buy for a crowded table. This table shows how many glasses or plates come out of each pouch.
| Blend | Made in | One serving | Enough for six | 500 g pouch | 1 kg pouch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agua Fresca Hibiscus Guava | Cold jug | 10 g | 60 g | 50 servings | 100 servings |
| Agua Fresca Horchata | Cold jug | 10 g | 60 g | — | 100 servings |
| Agua Fresca Lime and Chia | Cold jug | 10 g | 60 g | — | 100 servings |
| Agua Fresca Marzipan | Cold jug | 10 g | 60 g | 50 servings | 100 servings |
| Ponche Mexicano | Hot pot | 29 g | 174 g | 17 servings | 34 servings |
| Cafe de la Olla | Hot pot | 29 g | 174 g | 17 servings | — |
| Mexican Chocolate Chiapas | Hot pot | 29 g | 174 g | 17 servings | 34 servings |
| Mole Oaxaqueno | Sauce pan | 14 g | 84 g | 35 servings | — |
| Mole Poblano | Sauce pan | 14 g | 84 g | — | 71 servings |
A serving here is a weight, not a glass. We divide the pouch by the number of servings printed on it, so the grams add up whatever size cup you drink from.
A dash means we do not pack that blend in that size yet.
Find the right pouch
Tell us what you plan to make and how many people sit at your table. We match the right blend and size for dinner.
De nuestra cocina
We work out of Mexico, where market stalls still grind mole paste by hand and ladle horchata from wide glass barrels. An afternoon over an olla makes a fine drink, but nobody has that time on a Tuesday. We do the roasting and grinding first.
Our pouches hold that dry work so you can make a cold jug or a hot pot in minutes. It tastes like the drink you grew up with, without the stained counter.
9
2009
3
100
Telling close blends apart
A few of these pots share spices or names, but they work quite differently on the stove.
Ponche or agua de jamaica
Hibiscus turns up in both, and that is where the mix-up starts.
Agua de jamaica
A cold infusion of hibiscus flowers, one flavor carried on water, poured from the glass vitrolero at a market stall. Ours adds guava and chia to that same red jug.
Ponche navideno
A hot fruit brew for December: tejocote, guava, apple, sugarcane, tamarind and cinnamon simmered together. Hibiscus is one ingredient in the pot, not the drink itself.
If you brew ponche from whole flowers, lift them out after about fifteen minutes. Leave them in and the pot slides back into tasting like a hot agua fresca.
Oaxaqueno or Poblano
The honest answer is narrower than the internet suggests.
Mole Oaxaqueno
Oaxaca keeps a whole family of moles, and this is that kitchen: three chiles, Mexican cacao, toasted tortilla, sesame and warm spices, ground for the pan.
Mole Poblano
The Puebla recipe, the mole most people outside Mexico have eaten, ladled over turkey and chicken at weddings and at Christmas. Same short list of things going in.
We will not tell you which one runs darker or sweeter, because we have not put them side by side and measured it. What does differ is the pouch: the Oaxaqueno comes at 500 g, the Poblano at 1 kg.
Chocolate or champurrado
One is the drink, the other is what you do to it.
Mexican chocolate
Ground cacao whisked into hot milk until the foam climbs the mug. Thicker and far more cinnamon forward than cocoa out of a tin, and thin enough to sip.
Champurrado
The same chocolate thickened with masa until a spoon leaves a track in it. Breakfast at a cold market stall, handed over next to a tamal.
Slake the masa in cold water and stir it smooth before it goes anywhere near the pot. Dropped dry into hot milk it seizes into lumps that no whisk will break. Use masa for tortillas, not the coarser tamal grind.
Guides for the kitchen
Read our notes on brewing olla coffee, loosening mole into broth, or mixing horchata with water instead of milk.
How much powder goes in the jug
The pouch tells you how many servings are in it. It does not tell you how much goes in a two quart jug on a Tuesday, and that is the number everybody actually wants.
Ponche on the stove
Hibiscus shows up in both drinks, which is where the confusion starts. One is a cold red jug with a single flavor in it. The other is a December pot with half an orchard going.
Cafe de la olla without boiling it
Look up olla coffee and you get four recipes with four different amounts of everything. They are all right. The part they agree on is the part nobody writes in bold, and it is what happens to the heat.
From mole powder to a sauce
Dry mole is not a sauce mix you tip into liquid. It goes through a paste on the way, and the pan does the work in two stages rather than one.
Champurrado without lumps
Champurrado is the same hot chocolate with masa stirred through it until a spoon leaves a track. The chocolate half is easy. The masa half has exactly one way to go wrong, and almost everybody finds it the first time.
Horchata on water or on milk
Both are real answers, and people argue about it because both taste like the horchata they grew up with. What follows is what actually changes in the glass.
Notes from people who drank them
We left the complaints in place, and we mark each spot where a longer note was trimmed.
We love agua Jamaica (hibiscus) and also guayaba (guava). This mix has great taste but following the recommended amount to make, it is very sweet. And clearly made with actual guava, the little bits floating in the drink were off-putting.
This ponche tastes amazing. Just add hot water and stir. You can't beat it! Made ponche last Christmas from scratch...this tasted just as good and 100x easier.
I have never really liked coffee but when I was in Cabo, I tried some Cafe de olla and really enjoyed it. This is similar but it is pretty sweet. Sometimes I mix it with regular coffee and that helps not make it so sweet.
This was surprisingly good. And very easy to make. Though I wanted to actually COOK the chicken w/ the Mole, not just use as a topping, so I made it thinner so while the chicken was baking in it it thickened up.
Questions from the kitchen
Answers about sediment, pan heat, and how these dry mixes behave.
There is sediment at the bottom of the jug.
That is the drink working properly. Horchata is ground rice and settles; the hibiscus and lime blends carry whole chia that swells and hangs in the water. Give the jug a stir before each pour rather than straining it out.
It went lumpy when I tipped it in.
Dry powder hitting a full jug always clumps. Work the scoop into a small amount of water first, stir it to a smooth slurry, then top the jug up. This is the fix for every pouch in the line, cold or hot.
Can I just add hot water to a cup of the coffee?
No. Cafe de la Olla is real ground coffee with cinnamon and clove milled through it, not an instant powder. Brew it as coffee, in a French press or a pot, then press or strain. Coarse grind, and do not let it boil.
It came out sweeter than I expected.
The sweetening is already in the grind, so there is nothing to leave out at the stove. Two things work: use less powder for the same amount of water, and for the coffee, cut it with plain grounds in the same press. The panel on the pouch has the exact figures.
How do I get from mole powder to a sauce?
The method most recipes use: work about three parts powder with one part warm broth and one part water into a thick paste in the pan, then loosen that paste with roughly three times its own volume of hot broth. Simmer around twenty minutes and keep the spoon moving, because ground seeds and cacao catch on the bottom. It tightens as it stands and tightens again in the fridge; hot broth opens it back up.
Horchata on water or on milk?
Water is the traditional way and the way this blend is built. Milk makes it heavier and rounder, which some people prefer. Either way it goes into cold liquid, never hot.
Buen provecho
A full jug on a weeknight
Skip the long afternoon at the stove and pour something real. Keep a pouch in the pantry for whenever company stops by.