tamales.md

Tamales

A steamed corn based pie with fillings inside and covered in a sauce.

• You will need tin foil, parchment paper, banana leaves, or corn husks soaked in boiling water to wrap the tamales for steaming. I recomend tin foil as it is the cheapest and easiest to use, and least likely to leak or lose it's shape. You could also use an edible wrapper like cabbage or swiss chard, but again, I think tin foil is the most forgiving and easiest to use.

• You can top the tamles with a number of different sauces, from mole to salsa verde to even just ketchup. (Yes, ketchup. Its actually really common to eat tamales with ketchup in many parts of the caribean and South America.) In this receipe I have listed a red chili sauce. It is similar to a gravy.

Ingredients

Red Sauce

• 3 dried pasilla or ancho chilies, 3 dried chipotle chilies
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp shortening
• 2 Tbsp flour or 1 Tbsp corn starch
• 2 cups chicken stock
• salt, pepper, cumin, garlic, lime juice to taste

Dough

• 3 cups of masa harina para tamales (corn flour used for making tamales and tortillas)
• 1 cup of chicken stock
• 2 cups water
• 8oz or 1 cup shortening (lard is traditional but you can also use crisco or butter)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Filling Ideas

• Cheese and Roasted Jalapeno chilies
• Roasted Pork shoulder
• Ground beef spiced with chilies (picadillo)
• Chicken, tomatillo and cheese
• Chorizo and beans
• tomatoes, chilies and spinach

Instructions

Sauce

1. Take the stems off the chilies and remove the seeds and veins. Grind them up in a spice grinder or food processor.
2. Make a roux with the shortening and flour
3. Add the chicken stock and tomato paste and mix in
4. Add in the chili powder you made and all the other spices.
5. Simmer and stir continuously until the sauce thickens.
6. Strain the sauce into a container.

Dough

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together
2. Add in the wet ingredients and mix until the consistency is like hummus or mashed potatoes. If it's too thick, add more water.
3. Knead and mix the dough for 10 min then let it rest 30 min or even over night to allow the corn meal to absord the water.

Tamales

1. Spread 2 Tbsp of dough onto your wrapper into a thin rectangle shape.

2. Spread about 1 Tbsp of your filling into the middle of the dough leaving about an inch around all the sides.

3. Press the sides together so it forms a cylinder shape.

4. Wrap up the tamale.

5. Place the wrapped tamales into your steamer. You can stack them up many layers high.

6. Steam them for 1 hour or until the wrapper comes away from the tamale cleanly.