Making tamales is family tradition

AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN ^ | Sunday, December 05, 2004 | By Suzannah Gonzales

[kstewskis]

And judge restaurants based on their quality of tamale. I find it hard to leave any restaurant.

Jordans on 7th St. in Phoenix.

THE best green corn tamales around.

After almost 20 years (he's been there a lot longer), I have yet to walk out.

[oyez]

What's wrong with lard? My late grandmother used to use lard to grease the baking sheet for making biscuits. No better biscuits were ever made. I'd give a weeks pay for two of those with a tablespoon of sorghum molasses and real butter.

[Xenalyte]

My former neighbors were devout LDS church members, and had a family tradition of making tamales on New Year's Eve. They got me started.

I really never thought I would ever see the concepts of "Mormon" and "tamales" in the same sentence. :)

[FITZ]

Nothing -- except when people try to leave it out or substitute for it.

[FITZ]

Oh, come on. Mexico is not a "third world country."

Have you been there lately? Or traveled past the luxury resorts like Cancan? There are thousands of people living in cardboard/old wood pallet shacks just across the border -- no running water or toilets -- open latrines. Very high birth rate, very high infant death rate, kids everywhere living and begging for a living on the streets. Extreme poverty for the majority of the people --- so desperate they'll be crammed over 100 in an unventilated semi-trailer to leave their homeland --- that's pretty third world --- in spite of the vast wealth there is in that country.

[Gabz]

Great story.

My husband spent many years in Arizona and Texas and used to tell me the stories of the fresh tamales he used to get and how much he missed them.


I decided to surprise him by making them one day......how was I supposed to know it was an all day project, I'm a Irish kid from Brooklyn!!!!

I've been making them ever since.

[Gabz]

Well, there you have it. Your back is tired, and your kitchen is a mess. Now you know why they’re so expensive to buy!

You've got that right.

Thanks for sharing your recipe.

[gopheraj]

I am just guessing here, but guessing that they make tamales at Christmas time since it is cold enough to butcher a hog (and maybe just kept the tamales making at that time of year). That's when we butcher hogs. Need cold weather for that. I love tamales. Hog head is the best flavored. Never made tamales but have a good mexican recipe for them.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[BunnySlippers]

It isn't just Christmas only. Tamales are made year round ... but Christmas tamales are a ritual. A very delicious one at that.

[uglybiker]

Buy a cheap bone-in pork roast or maybe two.

Try venison. It'll be the start of a new tradition. Gar-awn-teed!

[Labyrinthos]

My uncharitable take on this.... Just another feel good article about these oh so authentic tamale making 3rd world Mexican people. Giving a promotion to the on going illegal alien invasion. White people have no soul but folks from the 3rd world do. These articles out number anti illegal immigration articles by 100:1. 80 years ago it would have been the happy "darkies" eating watermelon in the summer.

I'm sure you feel the same about people with Italian surnames who still make their own pasta for Christmas and the Mc's who make their own soda bread.

[snopercod]

Hey, great idea. As luck would have it, I happen to have some vennison in the freezer ;-)

[fuzzthatwuz]

Thanks for sharing the tamale recipe! It is definitely a "keeper". It has been copied and pasted in my wife's recipe folder.

[snopercod]

Thanks! I like the green ones better than the red, too, but wasn't sure how to make them.

We have a little tienda in our town (pop. 400), and the owner brings in a pot of chicken and salsa verde tamales every Saturday morning. They make a great breakfast at $1 each.

Last time I was down there I bought a couple of cans of what I thought were chili sauce, but they turned out to be Chipotle peppers in red sauce. I tossed them in the casserole I was making anyway. Holy Shiite! those were hot hot hot! The brand was La Morena.

[asgardshill]

Another food thread. Just what I needed - thanks heaps.

Now I've got to pay my neighbor a visit and look pitifully malnourished again (a real trick with that band of lard around my waist). She's going to start up her holiday tamale-making operation again in a few days, and I want in on the ground floor this time.

[virgil]

Thanks for the wonderful recipe!

[Arrowhead1952]

Laura Bush stated when she was showing off the white decorations to the media that her family's Christmas eve celebrations included tamales and enchilada's!

Laura has good taste in food as well as other areas. They porobably had fresh tamales in Austin when Dubya was governor of Tx.

[Arrowhead1952]

He also said if a Mexican restaurant does not have them,walk out.

That is one rule our friend in Corpus Christi lives by, no tamales - no business for you.

[eleni121]

Yummy...reminds of the best tamales I ever had..in Panama City, Panama.