Hot Tamale!

Since I didn't have a ton of cooking to do this year for Turkey-Day, I got together with a few co-workers Wednesday night to make tamales.  Something I've always wanted to learn!  Surprisingly, it wasn't as awful as some people make it out to be. lol.  The hardest, most time consuming part, in my opinion, was making the chili sauce the night before.  I'll try and walk you through the process...

It all began with a trip to the Latino Grocery in Escondido Monday evening to get all our ingredients.  Lemme tell you - the shop owners there sure got a kick out of us young white dumb dumbs shopping for tamale stuff.  It was quite fun though.  My haul included an abundance of dried chili varietals, 5lbs of pork shoulder, prepared masa, corn husks, onion, corn, and Mexican oregano.

My tutor, Amanda, boils her meat for hours, but I was too impatient to deal with that so I cooked mine in the crocker while I was at work Tuesday.  Here is is all done pre-shredding.

Next up Tues. evening I had to make the chili sauce to mix with the shredded pork.  Here's where it gets fun.

See -- chilies ---

First you toast them a little.  I kept charring them.  What?  It all happened so fast.

Then you lob off the tops and take the seeds out.  If you want.  I didn't go too crazy.  A) because I'm impatient as you know, and B) because I wanted it spicy.  After you dismantle them, you've gotta soften them up a bit in some boiling water.  Puree them with all the liquid.

The sucky part for me was that I only have a very small mesh strainer and I wanted to push all the sauce through the sieve to get the chunks out. It took For-Ev-A but I'm glad I did. 

*Note - when you mix the sauce and the meat (and corn and onion like I did), it really doesn't taste that good.  It's so weird, but I swear something magical happens when it's steamed inside the masa.  It's totally different!!

Ok, so Wednesday came and we got all set up.  Really this only involved soaking the husks to soften them up a bit and we were ready to go.  The bigger the husks are the easiest to use.  Size matters! 

It does take a few practice ones to get going but once you've got the hang of spreading the masa, it's pretty straight forward.  Just spread, fill, fold up and tie.  You can fill a big pot full of them and steam for about an hour.  After they're done, enjoy right away, store in the fridge for a few days, or pop in the freezer.  They were very good!