T is for Tamales ...

... Monday I had the great pleasure of making tamales with my mom and my sisters.

For those of you who don't know, my mom is from Mexico, which I like to think makes me quasi-Mexican. I may not actually have any Mexican blood in me, but I have learned to make some pretty great Mexican food over the years. Tamales are one of those.

Tamales aren't hard to make, but they are time-intensive and a lot of work. It goes by faster when you're doing it with others, so if you're going to make these, I'd recommend having a tamale party, and rolling them assembly line style. That's how we did it.

We loosely followed this recipe, improvising a bit on the flavoring of the meat and the amount of chicken broth in the masa.

Here's some directions and tips that might be helpful.

First, make the meat. We had one pork roast and one beef roast, so we just combined the two meats. But you can keep them seperate if you want. We crockpotted them over night, then shredded and seasoned them the next day. The more tender the meat is, the bettter. We like ours to be a little spicier than the recipe, so we added some chile enchilda sauce and extra chile powder. It turned out perfect.

While the meat is cooking, soak the corn husks in water, then pat them dry. Then mix up the masa. You want it to be spreadable, so don't make it too dry. We added about a cup more broth than the recipe called for in order to get it to the consistency we wanted.

Spread the masa on the corn husk with your fingers so that it's about 1/8 inch thick, and about 1/2 inch away from each side, and two inches away from the top and bottom.

Then put the meat down the middle of the masa. The higher the ratio of meat to masa, the better, but make sure you can still roll it without any problems.

Then take one side of the corn husk, fold it in half over the other, fold up the bottom of the corn husk into the roll, and finish rolling. (Did that make sense at all?)

After you've rolled the tamale, tie the open end closed with a long, thin piece of corn husk. A double knot will do the trick.

Then steam them and enjoy! The recipe link gives directions for steaming, but we had to almost triple the steaming time it called for. Don't get discouraged if your tamales aren't done after an hour, it took us almost three! The tamales are done when the masa is firm and stays together when the tamale is unrolled. Eat some fresh - that's when they're the very best!

You can freeze tamales cooked or uncooked. If cooked, just pop them in the microwave for a minute or so. If uncooked, let thaw, the steam as normal.

Home made tamales are delicious, so I hope you'll take the challenge and try making these. They are so much better than most you'll find in stores and even restaurants.