Tamales -- as requested by Revvy.

Here is my basic Pork Tamale Ingredients and Recipe.
This makes a dozen tamales.

For the Pork Tamale Filling:
1 pound of pork shoulder ( if you use a 5 pound boston butt, you'll have plenty of leftovers to freeze or use for tacos )
1 bottle of Mexican Coke -- or throwback pepsi -- use the kind with Cane Sugar.. seriously, it makes a difference.
1 small can of El Pato or a similar mexican tomato sauce.
1/4 cup of onions
Big pinch of Kosher Salt and fresh cracked black pepper.
1 tsp liquid smoke.
2-3 cascabel peppers. You can use serranos, jalapeno or whatever you wish.
Stock or water to cover the pork shoulder in your stockpot or dutch oven.

simmer for 2 hours, then let rest in the liquid until cool.
You can ice bath it in the sink to speed things up if you want.

For the Masa:
2 Cups of Masa Harina
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 cups warm water or stock
1/2 cup reserved simmering liquid or stock
4oz lard or shortening.

Using a hand blender or stand mixer, mix the lard,baking powder and masa. add the simmering liquid reserved from the pork. Continue mixing while slowly adding the remaining liquid. You want the masa to resemble a medium cake batter.
Let the masa rest for 30 minutes before assembling the tamales.

Assemble the tamales using soaked corn husks or Parchment paper.
Steam them for an hour to an hour and a half.
They are done when the tamales separate easily from the corn husks or parchment wrappers when opening.


Pretty easy and economical.

Pics or it didn't happen.

(I know he's got pics, I saw them on FB when he was making them over the weekend.)

I'm going do this recipe this weekend. Can't decide if I'm gonna go with the cascabels, or switch it for Chipotles in Adobo.

Oooooh, I can't wait to make these. Although, it might not be for a while because we don't have some of those ingredients in the Northwoods. Maybe when I get back Texas next winter, I can turn into one of those "tamales ladies".

Making tamales is the one culinary frontier I want to get into but haven't. I even have a tamale cookbook. I think with a family of 5 I might at well make 5 dozen while I'm at it though.

I will have to watch my wife closer the next time she makes hers- she's honduran and in central america they use banana leaves and cook the masa forever. she puts like 10 little things in there - like a piece of meat, raisins, capers, an olive, a piece of yuca, some rice...it's quite an assembly process, but very different from mexican style tamales. i love anything that comes in a natural wrapper!

how do you steam anything that size? I have a steamer, but its a stovetop one, for veggies and what not.

also, i dont do tomatoes... substitue suggestion?

claphamsa said:

how do you steam anything that size? I have a steamer, but its a stovetop one, for veggies and what not.

also, i dont do tomatoes... substitue suggestion?

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You need this kind of thing
http://www.google.com/m/products/ca...a=X&ei=97iRT7DYCsGSiQKetLj9Ag&ved=0CEkQ8wIwAA

These sound wonderful. My first and only try at tamales a few years ago was more or less a success... I gave myself a solid 6 or 7. The tops were a bit too dry, and I insisted on trying to make a few cactus ones that bombed.

Yoop, speaking of tamale ladies, we have a mom and her young daughter who sits in front of the supermarket with a cooler on a granny cart. She has a little sign advertising her tamales and roasted corn and rice-milk, and everything looks so good. Problems are that I never have cash when she is out there, and its most likely, shall we say, not up to code...

My wife would love these, but I don't like tamales myself and she doesn't cook. So, the pork butt goes in Chile Verde.

claphamsa said:

how do you steam anything that size? I have a steamer, but its a stovetop one, for veggies and what not.

also, i dont do tomatoes... substitue suggestion?

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Here's my tamale session from a week later using his amazing recipe. I acutally steamed them in my stovetop brewing 5 gallon kettle.

My recipes a tad different but it still uses mexican coke and most everything else in his recipe, just added a few more things. Salt, Pepper, Liquid smoke, Cumin, Garlic, 1 Chipotle in adobo, 1 Cascabel chili, 1 Ancho Chili, Onions, Thyme, Anatto, Souzon Goya, Mexican tomato sauce, REAL Mexican Coke, and a little stock.

Oh man that looks good

The best tamales I ever had was in Kansas city at a hole in the wall named Mama Tios. They smothered theirs in a pork/ tomato sauce that had chunks of pork in it as well. My version has onions, tomatoes, some of the reserved stewing liquid, sofrito, and more Mexican Coke. And of course chunks of pork butt.

That looks ungodly good Revvy. Sorry for the pun.

claphamsa I don't really know about a tomatoe sub, I hate raw tomatoes, but don't mind them cooked down. So you don't even do spaghetti sauce?

Tomatoes are different from, I dont know, mushrooms maybe, in that if you tried mushrooms once and decided you hated them, you never have to go back and try again. I would suggest you do, but you dont have to. Sooo many things have tomatoes as the ground floor building block that if you write them off completely you are missing out on an aweful lot. Unless you have been trying them cooked first and raw second about once a year and deemed them nasty each time, I have to suggest strongly suggest you try to develop a taste for them.

I GUESS you could sub vietnamese chili and garlic paste? It wouldnt taste authentic at all, but it WOULD have the right color Id think... plus garlic is good...

CreamyGoodness said:

Tomatoes are different from, I dont know, mushrooms maybe, in that if you tried mushrooms once and decided you hated them, you never have to go back and try again. I would suggest you do, but you dont have to. Sooo many things have tomatoes as the ground floor building block that if you write them off completely you are missing out on an aweful lot. Unless you have been trying them cooked first and raw second about once a year and deemed them nasty each time, I have to suggest strongly suggest you try to develop a taste for them.

I GUESS you could sub vietnamese chili and garlic paste? It wouldnt taste authentic at all, but it WOULD have the right color Id think... plus garlic is good...

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Well speaking of mushrooms, I wonder if he could do a "mushroom water?" I cooked something the other day that had dried porcini mushrooms that I reconsititued with boiling water and let them steep. I used the musrooms, but I also used the steeping liquid. It's very 'meaty" tasty and has an earthy depth to it. It doesn't have the acidity but tomatoes and porcini mushroom liquid both are high in umami.

It might be a decent sub in this case.

I just pursed my lip and nodded while reading that. Thats my go-to "hmm... that just might work" look.

Revvy said:

claphamsa I don't really know about a tomatoe sub, I hate raw tomatoes, but don't mind them cooked down. So you don't even do spaghetti sauce?

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nope, nothing tomatoe.wont do ketchup .... nothing.

If the mushroom water doesn't thrill you, perhaps using a can of beef stock instead.

those are the 2 things ive made chilli out of

Then that should work. Give it a try and let us know.

Here's a good recipe without tomatoes.
http://www.rickbayless.com/recipe/view?recipeID=118

Props on how you steamed those Revvy... I'm the guy that rushes out to by a specialty item like a steamer basket for something like this, but that looks like it would work great.

The basket comes from my spaghetti pot, and I used a folding steamer to raise it up above water level.

This recipe is so much differant from what we do...i like the tamales from my moms side a little more than my dads but ours start the night before and its normally at least 10 pounds of meat and 15 pounds of masa to even mke it worth it. My 80 year old grandma still does about 30 lbs of meat and 45 of masa for christmas. We have been doin em for the last 2 years at my house and i have yet to master these lil treasures.
To steam them we use a pie tin with holes poked in with a knife and they are stacked like a teepee and cover with hand towels to hold the steam in

I thought theses were good when I made them:

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/tamales/

kosmokramer said:

This recipe is so much differant from what we do...i like the tamales from my moms side a little more than my dads but ours start the night before and its normally at least 10 pounds of meat and 15 pounds of masa to even mke it worth it. My 80 year old grandma still does about 30 lbs of meat and 45 of masa for christmas. We have been doin em for the last 2 years at my house and i have yet to master these lil treasures.
To steam them we use a pie tin with holes poked in with a knife and they are stacked like a teepee and cover with hand towels to hold the steam in

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we do the christmas tamales too- actually christmas eve (my vowel ridden family)- they use my brew pot and load with a layer of banana leaves, tamales, leaves, et al per infinium... i don't what they put in the pot bottom - but i clean extra special... oh and they have at least two stirrers going on chicken and pork masa on the stove for at least 16 hours

claphamsa - you might try to buy a veggie green chili from the store in place of the tomato sauce, check the label though, some will have tomatillo in them (don't know if you would enjoy them, not tomatoes but similar) or maybe look online for a recipe without tomatillo if that's an issue. the tomato sauce is really in the braising liquid just to add some flavor (if the green chili is chunky, just puree it if you like). make sure it is a chili (no beans) and not just plain chiles. or now that i think of it, you could probably just get a can of fire roasted green chiles and throw it in with everything, should be fine. serve it with a green chili con carne.

could just as easily make green pork tamales as red pork tamales. i work with a lady that does both and as much as i enjoy the red, there is not much better than the green, especially when the hatch green chiles are in season.

b

edit: if you go with the straight chiles, i would maybe use some chili spice in the braising liquid too. don't be afraid to stick your finger in the liquid and taste it (or spoon). what ever that liquid taste like is going into your pork. recipes are all about doctoring them up to suit your taste. things can be added, changed or omitted (most cases).

Yooper said:

Oooooh, I can't wait to make these. Although, it might not be for a while because we don't have some of those ingredients in the Northwoods. Maybe when I get back Texas next winter, I can turn into one of those "tamales ladies".

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THIS is one thing I love about living in El Paso, TX! This post has inspired me to make a batch of my homemade red sauce!

Stauffbier said:

THIS is one thing I love about living in El Paso, TX! This post has inspired me to make a batch of my homemade red sauce!

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Yup... socal has all the good chile year round