Tamale time

This year, we did not travel back to California for the Christmas break. We spent 2 blissful weeks, just hanging out at home, going to the movies, and cooking tons of delicious things to eat.  It is a Christmas tradition that we eat tamales. Normally, we are back in California, and we are treated to unlimited tamales hand made by my in-laws. But no longer being in our home state, we had to make our own this year.

Tamales are delicious, but require a lot of ingredients and labor. The first thing we had to do was go out and gather our ingredients. We don't have a large Mexican population here, so that makes it a bit of a challenge. But there is one particular grocery store that does stock up on Mexican ingredients. And it's only about 20 minutes away. How can you tell when a grocery store will have a large selection of Mexican ingredients? It will most likely contain 2 things. A fresh tortillaria , and an aisle of these babies. 

Since when did they start selling Lottery candles? They didn't have these when I was a kid. 

Lottery candle, anyone?

Every time we walk into this store, it immediately brings back pleasant memories of home. The sights, the smells, the abundance of delicious items that are familiar to us, yet hard to find here. It really does have every item on our tamale shopping list. Check out the spices and chile's. Yes, we need those.

You are going to need spices

and chiles.

Speaking of ingredients, here is what you will need to make about 5 dozen tamales.

To form the tamales, you will need the following ingredients:

• 1 bag of dried corn husks.

For the pork filling:

• 3 lbs of boneless or 5 lb bone in pork butt, with as little fat as possible.
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 onion
• 3 tbsp salt

For chili sauce:

• 3oz bag of California chiles
• 3 or 4 Guajillo chiles
• 3 or 4 chili negro or chili ancho, whichever you can find
• 6 gloves of garlic
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 1/2 tbsp Siete Azahares or Especial Mixtas Pickling
• 4tbps Caldo de Pollo seasoning

For the masa:

• 1 bag of Maseca Tamal masa mix, or fresh masa, whichever you can find. If you buy the masa mix, make sure it is for tamales, and not tortillas.
• One bag of tamale masa (it needs to be tamale masa, not tortilla masa)about 2/3 cup of lard 
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups of pork broth made from cooking the pork
• 1/2 tsp salt

As I said earlier, tamales are labor intensive. You can make them alone, but it's easier with some help. This year, poor Alex pretty much made them on his own. I had been ill earlier in the week, and this pushed back my baking schedule. So I did my baking Christmas Eve morning, then had to go to work for a couple of hours. This left the tamale making to the men of the house.

You can expect this to take up most of your day. So it really is easier to have help.  I will break the steps up into sections. But before I do, let's set some ground rules. Making tamales can be a messy job. The chili sauce stains, you get masa on your hands, etc. You should either wear an apron, or clothes that you don't mind getting dirty. The next thing that you need to keep in mind is that you will be using plenty of pots, bowls, spoons, strainers, measuring cups, etc. You will be using a lot of kitchen equipment. Your counters are going to be covered with various things. We do try to wash and get things off the counter to keep it tidy, but it's almost impossible to do. There is just too much going on. So just be prepared for a messy looking kitchen. Just keep wiping down the counters, and moving empty kitchen gear into the sink. Ok, on to the steps to making tamales.

The corn husks:

The night before you plan on making the tamales, get out your bag of dried corn husks and soak them in a big container of some sort. We usually use a large cooler. Make sure that the corn husks are completely submerged. This will help to make the corn husks soft and pliable when you start to form the tamales the next day. So let them soak over night. The next day, go ahead and dump the water and leave the corn husks in the container while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

The pork:

Take your pork butt, removing as much fat as possible. Cut it up into chunks,

and place it into a large pot filled with water. Add 1/2 onion (not diced), 4 cloves of garlic, and let the water boil. Once boiled, add 3 tbsp salt. Cover and let the meat cook for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Then pull pork out and save the broth. You will use the broth later. 

Cooked pork, ready to be shredded.

The broth. Save this for later!

Once the pork is cooked and out of the pot, go ahead and shred it with your hands. 

Chile sauce:

Take all of the Calfornia chiles, 3 or 4 guajillo chiles, 3 or 4 negro or ancho chiles, into a large pot. Fill the pot with water until the chiles are covered. Boil until the chiles feel tender.

Chiles are chillin' in the pot.

Once tender, pull them out and pat them to get rid of any steam. You can throw out the water from the pot.

Gently pat down the chiles to remove steam.

Place the chiles into a blender, add 1/2 to 3/4 cups of the pork broth, 6 cloves of garlic, 1 tbps oregano, 1 1/2 tbsp Siete Azahares or Espcial Mixtas Pickling, 4 tbsp Caldo de Pollo seasoning. Blend it all together very well.

Blending the chiles.

You will need to have a fine strainer. Pour the chili sauce through the strainer to remove any chunks of chili. Set your chili sauce aside.

Take another pot, add a bit of olive oil, and heat up, as you put shredded pork and add chili sauce. Mix in the chili sauce a little at a time. You do not want it too wet. Mix well and remove from flame once it is heated. 

Masa:

This is the best masa mix we have used. Try to find this brand, if you can. And remember that it has to be specifically for tamales, not tortillas.

Take 2 cups of the Masa Tamal mix,1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, and mix together. Then take  2 cups of the of the pork broth,  and pour it into the masa mixture. Mix well with your hands. In another bowl, take the 2/3 cup of lard and beat it until it is soft. Then  add your masa mixture and continue to beat until the batter is smooth and slightly sticky.

Mixin' the masa. In case you haven't noticed, making tamales is very hands on.

While we are on the subject of tamales being hands on, let me warn you that your clothes can get messy. Either wear an apron that covers you well, or wear clothes that you don't care about.Ok, you are finally ready to set up your assembly line. You will need a corn husk station, masa station, pork station, and a large  cake pan to place them on once assembled. The cake pan will let you place the tamales standing up, rather than lay them flat.

Take a corn husk and open it up onto the palm of your hand. Use a spoon to place the masa mix and smear it all over the corn husk. You don't want to little or too much masa. You can use a spoon, butter knife or your hands to spread the masa. Oh that is another thing. Because you are using your hands so much, you are washing them like crazy. Have plenty of hand towels or paper towels available to dry your hands.

Noah's first tamal of the season. It's a tradition to take a picture.

Nik making his first tamal of the season. And what did I say about the counters? Overflowing with stuff. Just accept it and move on to the next tamale.

 Next, move over to your meat station. Spoon on a good amount of pork. Again, you don't want too little or too much pork.

Noah loading up the tamale.

Once you have your pork on, take the 2 sides of the tamale and roll them together, and finally fold up the bottom portion.

Here are the assembled tamales. OMG, what a mess. Anyway, just focus on the tamales and cute kids.

 Place the assembled tamale into the cake pan, and move on to your next tamale. You will continue to do this until you assemble every last tamale, or die of exhaustion. Whichever comes first.

Gut check time. Keep building those tamales!

Once every tamale is assembled, take a large tamale steamer (with just a little bit of water at the bottom) and start to place them standing up inside. You kind of lean them standing up in a circle.

Keep doing that until you have all of your tamales in the pot. Then place the large steamer onto the stove and let them steam away on medium heat. Once the windows to the kitchen start to steam up, we know they are close to ready. But the best way to tell, is to take a tamale out and taste it. If the masa is somewhat firm, then you know they are ready. 

Phew, that is a lot of work, but so worth it!

 
And they are ready to eat!

Thumbs up, Noah!

See next blog post for ideas to use the left over chili sauce.