Part 2 Tamales

Advanced Member Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 172

...Making tamales is very easy if you divide the process up into two days. Make the filling and sauce one day and the tamales the next.

I'm going to use the left over cochinita pibil I made and some chicken that is leftover from the stock I am making. Four large chicken leg quarters will make about 40 tamales.

Whatever meat you decide to use, shred it, put it in a bowl, and save it in the refrigerator.

For the sauce. Use whatever appeals to your taste. It doesn't matter. Go out and buy a can or two . You don't have to make it. Nobody will know. For some reason, red sauce is used on beef or pork and green sauce used on chicken. I really don't care that much for the green sauce so I usually use red.

For these tamales I used the cochinita pibil as is because it already has a great flavor and made a sauce for the chicken.

I used 5 dried pasilla peppers and 5 dried guajillo peppers.

Cut the stems off, take the seeds out, cut them up into small pieces, then put them into a dry frying pan over moderately high heat. Stir and toast them for about 5 minutes. Use your exhaust fan as the fumes can be irritating

Once toasted, put them in a bowl of hot water to soak for a couple of hours.

After they have finished soaking, put them in a blender with a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic, a chopped medium onion, and 2 cups of the liquid they were soaking in. Blend until smooth.

The sauce should not be thick. Stir the sauce in with your shredded meat. Start with a 1/4 cup and keep adding until it appeals to your taste.

To make the tamale dough you need a few ingredients. Some corn flour. I use the Masaca brand. Lard, salt, baking powder, and some chicken broth. If you made chicken for your tamales you can use the broth from that.

You're going to need some corn husks. The standard size package is 5 oz. and is enough to make about 80 tamales.

Take them out of the package and put them into a bowl of cold water to soak. Two hours is enough time.

You'll probably have to put something on top of them to keep them under water. A smaller bowl placed on top works good.

The basic recipe for the dough is to use 1 cup of chicken broth, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1/3 cup of lard to every cup of corn flour. Make sure you use lard. That's the secret ingredient that distinguishes a great tamale from an average one. With this recipe, using 1 cup of flour, you will get about 20 thin tamales. Less if you use more dough. I am going to make about 80 tamales so I will use 4 cups of flour, 4 cups of chicken broth, 1-1/3 cups of lard, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Start out by putting your lard in a bowl and creaming it. You can do it by hand but a mixer helps.

Next add all your dry ingredients and mix them together with the lard.

Once all is mixed, start adding the chicken broth a little at a time and continue mixing. Keep adding broth and mixing until the dough is the consistency of a soft peanut butter. If the dough gets to wet just add more flour. If it gets to dry, add more broth. You want the dough to spread evenly on the corn husks.

A lot of people use a knife, a back of a spoon, or a spatula to spread the dough. I use a 4" putty knife. I've tried everything else and can't quite get the knack for it. My neighbor use to tell me that the dough would cook, from the heat of my hands, before I ever got it spread on the husk. When the dough is ready, scrape it out of the bowl and put it on the counter top.

Take one of your corn husks and spread some dough on it. Make sure the curly sides of the husk are facing up. The husks should be about 4 t 5 inches at the widest part. If they are bigger, rip a strip off. If they are to narrow you can overlap two. Start about 1/3 of the way down from the narrow end. Put as much dough on as you like. My tamales are thin so I cover the husk with a little more that 1/16 of an inch. I like less dough and more filling.

Spread about 20 husks.

Take some of the filling and put it on the husk.

Fold the bottom part of the husk over the filling.

Fold it over again.

Bring the end up and you are done.

Continue making tamales until you run out of dough or husks. If you're using two different fillings, rip narrow strips from a few husks and tie them around one type so you can tell the difference between them.

Now it's time for steaming. I don't have a steamer so I use a roasting pan. I put an inverted muffin pan on the bottom of my roasting pan to bring the tamales above the water level then put some grates on top of that. Put about 1-1/2 inches of water in the bottom of the pan making sure that the water level is at least 1/2 inch below the bottom of the grate.

Lay a row of tamales down the center of the pan then start laying tamales on top of them keeping the open end of the tamale up.

Keep repeating the process, a row down the center then tamales on top of those, until all are in the pan.

Cover everything with a towel. Cover with a lid and put the pan on the stove to get the water boiling.

Steam for 1-1/2 hours and the tamales are done. Add more water as necessary.