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Get the family gathered around and make you an "assembly line" and get to work! You won't regret the outcome!
This recipe makes about 6 dozen tamales.
This will actually look like 3 instructables, but they all add up to one great TAMALE! So let's get cooking!
STEP 1 will be making the meat - this is made ahead of time, and I like to put it in the slow cooker to cook overnight. This way the meat is tender and shreds apart easily.
STEP 2 will be making the masa (that dough like surrounding for the meat).
STEP 3 will be assembling the tamales - the part of tamale making where it helps to have lots of helpers to roll them up
STEP 4 will be cooking the tamales, and or course enjoying your reward!
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Signing UpStep 1Gather up the ingredients (but don't be in a rush, patience makes the best tamales)
You will need:
2 to 3 Tbs. lard or vegetable oil
3- to 3½-lb. boneless pork shoulder or Boston butt, cut into 3-inch chunks and trimmed
1 medium white onion, roughly chopped
6 medium cloves garlic, lightly smashed and peeled
4 dried bay leaves, toasted
2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme, marjoram, or mild oregano, or 1 Tbs. dried Mexican oregano
about 20 dried red chile stemmed and seeded: guajillo, New Mexico Big Jim and
Ancho all work well
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Black peppercorns
Soak the red chiles in hot water until they are soft. Add these to a blender and blend until smooth. Stir in the garlic, onion, thyme, marjoram, oregano, salt and pepper.
In a large enough bowl so the meat can be covered, add the cubed pork and smother with the chile mix so that it can marinate for a minimum of 3 hours.
After marinating for a sufficient amount of time, add the meat and the chile mixture to your slow cooker and cook on low overnight.
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Tengo mas de 10 years que no como tamales, since my mom passed away.
Muchas Gracias!
Mr. Lunna XIII
Thanks!
Using a bullion to make the broth would be a great idea for when you are making tamales from veggies or if you don't have broth from cooking the meat. I will have to look for some of this since most of my family eat pork, even though I don't.
Wow, I haven't even thought about the band Foghat in years, I might have to go pull some old albums now...
thanks for the comment! and the reminder of some good old heavy metal mania :)
And my Spanish is really bad.... but hey, not too bad for a white girl eh? :)
I hate to see recipes go into the "memories" bin, with no one really knowing how to make them. There are so many old recipes that have been lost over time, and it is nice when they are rediscovered as "new", but it would be better if they were never lost at all.
Thanks for the comment!
Thanks for the comment, I think I have some great new ideas now!
Unfortunately, I never learned how to make Tamales. Thanks again for sharing!
When tamales are filled with pork it can be any pork part that can be shredded or suitably cut in pieces.
Most of her tamales are more vegetarian, but her shrimp ones are really good.
I hope you can win this, I know how much you need a new food processor. WIsh I could buy you one for CHristmas, but this would be even better. Too bad there are people on here that cheat, but cheaters never win!
I had replied to your comment the other day, but I notice that it isn't showing up on here today so i am not sure you even recieved it.
I had mentioned that it is impossible to get the same results if you try to substitute the maseca. Other than trying to make your own by boiling maize in an alkalinized solution (water and lime is the usual), removing the hulls and grinding it, I don't know of any way to do it.
There are several places online where Maseca can be purchased and shipped to you. I don't think I would order a large amount, since Maseca will spoil after a certain amount of time.
You can make tamales with crushed or ground beans and rice mixed with water and spices, but I don't think you will get the same "tamale" taste from these. Or you can leave out the masa entirely, and just wrap the meat, but again, to me this just isn't a tamale.
I hope you can find a way to get some maseca/tamale mix to make you some. i can't imagine how it must be for you all to be living on the other side of the world where the foods you are accustomed to eating are not available. But then you probably have access to a lot of foods that are wonderfully delicious, but not available here stateside.
Thanks for the comment, and giving me the chance to so some more research on the amazing little tamale. Hope your Holiday was a wonderful one!
I know my husbands grandmother makes her own masa, but that involves a great deal of work and other ingredients that might be hard to get ahold of in Korea, including fresh unhusked hominy and lime. I have never tried her way of doing it, it makes me tired just watching her. She actually uses an old metate made of stone, and since I don't have one of those, it is another reason to skip out on the hard way. :)
I hope you can find some sort of substitute, and if I find one I will let you know. But for now, I am sorry, but I don't know of any.
Maseca is not just corn flour, it is processed through a process known as "nixtamalization" which gives the flour stickiness and pliability it would not have otherwise.
You can use any mortar instead of the metate, tough the metate was only bettered by mechanical processing of the corn.
If you are using the masa, (and I still call this the traditinal way, since it is the way most tamales are made in many parts of Mexico, New Mexico and Texas) then yes you would have to use the Maseca that has been processed with an alkaline solution and the husks removed from the maize or hominy (posole). There was another post asking about a substitue for the maseca, and I don't think my reply had posted after I wrote it, but i did do a good bit of research after reading the comment from bwalton, and found that the use of crushed beans rice in place of the maseca. In fact, since the hoja (corn husk) is just a vehicle for steaming the tamale, much like a banana leaf or even parchment paper for some dishes, the masa can be left out entirely. Although since the word tamale comes from the word nixtamal or the nixtamalization process, I am not sure a tamale without the masa would be called a tamale at all.
As for the metate vs. any other mortar and pestle, you are right. Metate's were formed largely by the grinding action of stone against stone, and some were carved or chipped out of the stone to have legs, raising them up so that the person processing the ingredients woudn't have to bend quite so far over. I do not own a metate, but I do have a molcajete (I added a photo of mine below). Since the molcajete was designed to grind chile, seeds and other smaller items, it would not be very useful for grinding large amounts of maize and such for tamale making.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me, I enjoy finding out more about the foods that I make, and learning more abotu where they originated and came from. Perhaps i should have been a food archeologist, but then I am just a cook, not even a chef. :)
...I agree with not using the pig head; kinda freaky sight....
In Mexico popular fillings include chilli with cheese (normally "poblano" or "cuaresmeño" chilli varieties combined with easy melting cheese like Oaxaca type), chicken, beef or pork with either green or red sauce, bean tamales, pineapple tamales, and sweet tamales in which the dough is mixed with a bit of honey or sugar and colouring to indicate the tamal is sweet, the filling being raisins.
In the most bizarre end of the spectrum you can get tamales filled with small boiled fish or even grasshoppers.
i agree there, I have never heard of any "curse" about putting something other than meat into the tamale! In fact I iove chocolate tamales (but then I do love chocolate).
The tamales (as far as I know) originated in Central and Meso America with the Mayan indians. It was the perfect meal for the warrior on the go. They put grasshoppers and other "proteins" that we don't generally eat today. They made their tamales far different than what most people make them today too, they may or may not have had the masa, they might have included such things as nuts and berries, beans and rice. That is one of the fascinating things about tamales, you can make them however you want to (for the most part at least).
I am going to have to try your chipotle version, that sounds really good!
I look forward to using your Instructible next Christmas. Thanks for taking the time to document and good luck in the contest!
That makes me even happier that I used this recipe for the instructable. I know that many of the recipes my mother's family made over the years were lost when my grandmother passed away. The same for my husband's family members taking their recipes and knowledge with them when they passed on.
I hope you have a great batch of tamales when you make them, but why wait until next Christmas? I know my husband and I have made them at other times during the year (and he is a great tamale roller). His grandmother, all 4 ft 2 in and 93 years old, makes them everytime she knows someone is coming to visit her and his grandpa. Wish I had that kind of energy to do it that often.
But whenever you make them, I hope you have a good time doing it and they come out fabulous!
I really like cheese tamales though. Homemade only.
I have never had store bought, but living out in the southwestern part of Texas you can usually find someone selling tamales on the street corner if you don't want to go through the work of doing your own. I have never tried to make cheese ones, but I have added some cheese to other ingredients. I love cheese though, and that sounds like a good idea.
Let me know how yours come out!