Happy New Year everyone! Hope all is well. I wanted to share some of my more recent kitchen adventures. For the holidays, I decided to take on making some tamales.
I’m not exactly sure of the history but I understand that making tamales tends to be a holiday tradition. Since I had some vacation time on my hands, it was a great opportunity to get back to cooking. After my first try at it, I was pleased with the results and might have to make this a yearly (if not more often) occurrance for my family.
Some tips for first time tamale makers:
1 — get a really big pot to steam your tamales. There are special pots/steamers called tamaleras which work really well. I found a 20 quart version at Cost Plus. A large stock pot with a steamer insert or something can work well too.
2 — If you can find pre-made masa, use it. This being my first time making tamales, and still recalling my 6 hour extravaganza trying to make my first mole) I welcomed this shortcut. For future attempts, I’ll try making my own masa.
3 — Budget at least an hour for stuffing. And be creative with your choice of stuffings. For some we stayed fairly generic — chicken, chiles, sauce. For others we tried chocolate, chocolate with cinnamon, and red bean paste.
4 — Freeze what you have left over. They make a great quick snack.
5 — Invite others over to help you make the tamales. It’s a lot of fun, and you can even make your own assembly line. We just had the two of us — one stuffing, the other tieing.
Sorry for not having any pictures…They were too good that we didn’t have a chance to snap a pic. Next time!
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