Realistically, it takes two days to make tamales. There are six separate stages to the process: The meat, the sauce, and the masa, the hojas (corn husks) and the instructions for combining them all, and the steaming.
Buy a cheap bone-in pork roast or maybe two. You want a total of about six or seven pounds to end up with enough meat to do them properly.
Cover the pork roast(s) with at least 8 cups of water and cook slowly until very tender. Use either in a crock pot (6-8 hours?) or in a large pot on the stove (3-4 hours?). To the pot, add two heaping tsp. of minced garlic, one large chopped onion, and a couple stalks of chopped celery. Salt and pepper to taste. The goal here is to season the broth, not so much the roast(s). I also toss in ten or twenty hot chilis like de arbol or japonicas to give the broth a little twang.
When the roast is not pink in the center, and almost falls apart with a fork, it’s done. Take it out, put it in a zip-lok baggie, and cool it down until you’re ready to put the tamales together. Save the broth – you’ll need six cups to make the masa, and a little to add to the chili sauce. (Remove the chilis from the broth, but leave the other stuff. You will add the onions and celery to the meat sauce.)
I usually stop at this point and make the other stuff the following day, but you can continue on if you are muy macho.
You need to soak the corn husks (some people use banana leaves, but they are harder to find) for at least four hours prior to putting the tamales together. I put them in a large pot and weigh them down with something to keep them under water.
The garden variety hojas you find in the supermarket are OK, but there is a lot of waste. Some of them will be too skinny to wrap tamales, and you have to discard those. I recently found a premium brand at a Mexican tienda which were almost all useable: The brand is ORALE! Hoja para tamal enconchada.
The easy way is to buy the sauce ready made, but here in the East, it’s hard to find. You will need two 28 oz. cans of Las Palmas red chili sauce, or you can use about five 10 oz. cans of enchilada sauce in whatever heat you want.
To make the sauce yourself, start with about twenty or thirty dried chilis – either California or New Mexico red chilis. I’m thinking this works out to about 8 oz. (Chili sauce is not my strong suit.)
Roast them on a cookie sheet in a 350-400 degree oven for about 3 minutes. More than that and they will burn. Don’t let that happen.
Remove them and submerge them in boiling hot water for about ten minutes until they are soft. You aren’t trying to cook them, just soften them.
When soft, remove the stems and seeds, and rinse them in cold, fresh water from the tap. Then toss as many as will fit into your blender, add maybe one cup of fresh water (not the water you steeped them in – it has a bitter taste) and another tsp. or two of minced garlic, and puree the chilis. Add the “stuff” from the bottom of the broth container – the celery, onions, etc. and puree it along with the chilis. You want the consistency to be like tomato sauce.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan, melt 4 TBSP. of bacon grease, lard, or Crisco. (Last batch I made, I was worried that the hickory smoke flavor in the bacon grease would taste funny, but it didn’t seem to.) Add 4 TBSP. of Wondra flour and stir like you were making gravy. When that is thoroughly mixed, add the chili puree from the blender, 1 TBSP. cumin, salt and pepper to taste. (I use Adobo rather than salt). Cook for about ten minutes to thicken.
Reserve about one cup of the chili sauce to add to the masa later on.
Remove the bones and shred or chop the pork you cooked previously, then add to the chili sauce. Also add one small jar of capers with juice (When people ask what they are, tell them some vague story about your pet rabbit getting loose). The pork is already cooked, so you are just trying to heat it up here.
In a very large bowl, place 8 cups of MA-SE-CA “Instant Corn Masa Mix”, or whatever brand you can find. MA-SE-CA makes one especially for tamales, but I haven’t tried it yet. Stir in 2 tsp. salt. With a fork, fold in 1 ½ cups of Crisco or lard (I use Crisco). Warm the pork broth you saved from earlier in the microwave then add 6 cups to the masa. Add 1 cup of chili sauce. (If you’re not using “instant” masa, I think you are supposed to add 2 TBSP. of baking powder. I added it anyway the last time, and it didn’t seem to hurt anything. Maybe it even helped.)
Mix well with your Chinese-made mixer until the dough has the consistency of cake frosting. (My mixer broke last time and I had to use my hands. It came out OK.) A small ball of the masa dough should barely sink when placed in a glass of cold water. You want the stuff to be spreadable with a spatula.
Select nice full hojas, and if you are right handed, place the pointy end to your left on a cutting board or large platter. With one of those rubber spatulas used for scraping things off the inside of bowls, spread the masa dough about 1/4" thick on the center part of the corn husk. There is an art to this. You want the masa to go all the way to the edge on one side, but only within about 1” on the other. Imagine that you will be rolling these up in a minute, and you will want one side of the corn husk to lap over the tamale to seal it like an envelop. You will get the hang of it after you try and roll up a few.
After the masa is spread, spoon a couple tablespoons of the pork/chili mixture into the center. Too much and it will squeeze out the ends and be wasted when you roll the tamale. I like to add a small black pitted olive in each one. Kind of a little surprise for lucky eater.
There are different ways to close up the tamales. The Mexicans are partial to folding them up, but I like to roll and tie them like the old XLNT brand tamales that you could buy in the store when I was a kid.
Rolled up tamales. Ideally, you want the masa to totally enclose the filling for esthetic reasons, but it really doesn’t matter. Lap one edge of the corn husk over the other to seal everything inside.
Then tie up each end with butcher’s twine. I cut a bunch of 8” pieces ahead of time. Trim off the excess twine after they are tied up, then set them aside. Don’t worry if they have sauce all over the outside. That will come clean when you steam them.
To fold them up, spread the masa and add the filling just the same. Forget the olive because these come out flat, not cylindrical. Fold the big end of the hoja over the masa, then the two sides. Then fold the whole thing in half like a book.
Another way to do it is to just use a big pot with some pint jars in the bottom, and a grate of some kind sitting on the jars to hold the tamales out of the water. This is probably the better way to do it, but I haven’t bothered to find a suitable grate, yet. This way, the lid seals better and the steam is assured of surrounding the tamales evenly.
Since everything except the masa is already cooked, so there are no health considerations regarding cooking time. Your goal is simply to steam the tamales until the masa is done. With “fat” tamales, I usually steam them for two hours. One hour might be enough with a smaller batch or skinnier tamales. (The thermodynamics alone would take weeks to explain...)
I tried using my 20Qt. pressure canner at 15PSI with this last batch, and it worked well. (I cooked them for one hour after closing the lid, which worked out to about 20 minutes at full pressure.)
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!
I’m not sure how many this recipe makes. 20-30 I think. It depends on your roll-up technique. They microwave well, and they freeze well.
Thank you so much for posting that recipe!
I make tamales too...I use "salsa verda"...basically spicy green tomatillas ground up with green chiles...you can buy it canned...
I have begun in the past taking turkey leftovers and making turkey black bean tamales...I also make chicken cheese tamales and the traditional pork tamales...BUT one of the best tamales I have found have been SWEET CORN tamales...almost dessert like.
I live in Houston and for many years an illegal alien and her young daughter...used to pull a red wagon with two coolers...one marked "HOT" the other (no kidding) marked "Gringo"...I finally worked my way to HOT.
I always wondered what happen to the little girl...she was about 4 or 5 and was the translator for her mother...but EVERY Friday evening they would come around (I lived in Montrose at the time late 70s ealy 80s...pure Bohemian) and she made I KNOW of at least 250.00 a week if not more.
I always think of them when I eat tamales.
Warning to all Gringo Tamale Cooks Wannabes!!!!!BE warned...the REAL trick is applying the masa to the husk THINNLY!!!!! If you don't get that part right...the rest is for naught! Practice with a small batch and before you cooked 8 pounds of meat!
Mucho gracias!
BOOKMARK!
Thanks for the great recipe and taking the time to type it out for all of us.
You've got that right.
Thanks for sharing your recipe.
Try venison. It'll be the start of a new tradition. Gar-awn-teed!
Thanks for sharing the tamale recipe! It is definitely a "keeper". It has been copied and pasted in my wife's recipe folder.
Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
my girlfriends mom told me that only one person can put the tamales in the pot with one hand or it ruins the whole bunch...