So you have everything ready? Well let's turn all those ingredients and
sauces into a gang of tamales!
The first thing you ought to do is to invite some of your most reliable
friends, family, and drinking buddies over to help out as this will
speed up the process considerably. Supply some drinks, a bowl of chips
and some salsa, and you have yourself a tamalada! In many Mexican
families, the woman and the more intelligent men get together before
Christmas to assemble all the tamales which will be required for the
coming festivities, and the tamales will often be frozen until they
need to be steamed. Plus since its a time when you gather around the
table for
a common purpose you can shoot the shit, aka Chisme Central y sabra que
mas. Make the people you know useful for once by having them lend
a hand to the cooking of the meals they will likely be enjoying on your
dime! ;)
By the way, a singular tamal is a tamal. A bunch of them are tamales. A
"tamale" is a food item that is similar but comes from a different
world.
This is a tamale. Just Say NO!
The other first thing you need to do is to get your hojas soaking in
hot water. Try to buy the no name kind that just come packed in a clear
plastic bag, maybe with a little paper tag inside that gives their
info, those tend to be the biggest and freshest ones around. Then
there's those available year round by the spice manufacturers which are
always small and dry which means more unnecessary pain. This was from a
once good batch but they've been sitting in a cupboard for over a
year, thus they are super dry. Oh well, they still work and I will use
them anyways. Fill up a pot with hot water, enough so that they can all
soak underwater.
Those dry husks will try to float away, make sure to put something
heavy on top to keep them in their watery prison. Submerge, Ye!
Once they have soaked for awhile the corn husks will be more pliable
and better suited for our needs. At this point, if you belong to a
fancy family or one with children that can be exploited for their
labor, you can have your corn husks rinsed and washed, removing all
the stray corn silks and whatever else all those bits are that cling to
husks. But you can also be more green and natural-ish by choosing to go
meh, they are good enough as is. I will not judge you either way.
With a spoon or spatula, or whatvery you discover works best, you will
want to spread a layer of masa around a nice portion of your
husk, not too thick. You don't want to do the whole bottom part because
that will overlap the bulk of the tamal and will be wasted, though it
does make for some nice tendrils of tamal you can eat while you work in
the kitchen.
After the masa spreading, a coating of your sauce.
Then you add your ingredients. For this tamal we are going with cheese
and rajas. And maybe a bit of extra sauce after.
Once all your stuffings are in place, roll it up! If you have a nice
and large hoja like this one, with masa spread around nicely, then it
should be easy to just bring the sides together. Seal in the filling
and sauce as best you can with your available masa then wrap the rest
around. Then you pull up the tail and fold it up against the tamal,
which should seal the bottom part of the tamal properly. You are hereby
granted the right to make 100 lousy and loose
tamales before you gain the practice of making them much tighter and
nicer. If you should go past your granted number of designated fuckups,
then you shall have to eat them. 'Tis only fair.
Every hoja is different, thus every tamal will be similarly difficult
to wrap. Use your lifelong practice of eye-hand coordination along with
your current duct-tape style research into forcing things to JUST WORK,
and
you should be fine. Here we see a tamal that seems to want to go
astray, reign it in!
When they get out of hand, they need to be crushed. At least try to
seal in that top opening that represents masa freedom. The better we
keep
them clamped down, the better we will be. Besides, we can't have them
getting any ideas. You might have
to stuff a bit of masa into the top of the tamal to perfect the seal.
It's a dirty business but somebody's got to do it.
A pot of tamales ready to go, a bunch of straglers ready for another
pot. Hey, there's my pic of the potato slices!
If you are making a small batch, your normal steamer will work. You
have no steamer? Well then, get your self some cheap-o pie pan, punch
some holes into it, then invert it into a pot and add some water: Ta Da!
For most of my
life I steamed my way through tamaladas using makeshift items, baking
ware as the solid item on which to rest our tamales, bent forks to
prevent a vacuum from forming, or to hold up shoddy pie-ware. Crumbled
foil paper stuffed in between the cracks to keep tamales from falling
into the water. Anything can be turned
into the service of steaming tamales. It works! But I've since pitched
in my $15
for a proper and huge tamalera, with its elevated floor and even a side
spout
for additional water. (Oddly, I haven't taken a picture of those, and
I'm not going to pull them out of the garage just for you. Maybe some
additional pics after my coming tamalada.) An investment worth making.
Still, I often just
use what I have on hand, like this small pot which is very practical.
Tamales about to get steamed in a basic pot. Add as much water as you
can without it getting to the tamales, that way you have less of a
chance that your steamer will dry out which leads to a pot of
burned/smoked tamales. You do not want to let the steaming water
disappear! All your hard work will be cancelled if you let your tamales
burn. Also, try not to pack your tamales in too tightly as that will
increase the cooking time. The free-er they are, the better they will
steam.
Add some of the crappier and bit pieces of husks to the top of your
pot. The will act as a steam insulator. Plus it's how my abue did it,
so why mess with tradition?
Wet a clean rag and put that on top of the hojas. This setup will help
to keep the steam in the pot. Plus, that's how I know it to be done.
And since I come from a timeless heritage of pots without lids, the
foil paper as the final sealant is a given. Maybe you have nice pots
with nice lids, then you might not need the foil or the wet rag. Look
at you, living the fancy life! Yet you have to go online to learn about
making tamales? Ha, I will take my monetary poverty over your cultural
lacking any day! Nah, I'm just kidding- give me your money.
And we top this improvised kitchenware with some aluminum lid I
inherited a long time ago, which fits none of my pots properly. Yet,
its perfect. That'll teach you to think less of me!
Get the pot boiling/steaming and then reduce the heat to a mid level,
just to keep the steam constant. I suggest you check the pot for water
after an hour, or sooner if you came up with some contraption that
barely holds water. If in doubt, add water. Best to be on the safe side.
The standard is to steam for two hours (yes, 2) but your tamales might
be done sooner. I know they can be ready sooner, but you shouldn't have
to worry about that unless your guests are annoyingly clamoring for
their tamales. You are not a factory, are you? Let them wait! I suggest
checking them on the hour, check the water level, pull a tamal out and
let it rest to see how they are doing. By two hours they should be
good, but once I had so many that I packed them in too tight in the pot
and two hours was not enough.
The test to check for tamal
readiness.
After at least an hour of steamining, pull one out and
semi-unwrap, just to expose it to the elements, to let it cool down.
After about 10 minutes a tamal that is ready will "set" and the masa
will gel properly, so that it pulls apart easily from the corn husk and
tamal itself will be solid and become whole.
A tamal that is not ready will be floppy and fluid, unaware of its
intended solid identity, and it will stick to the husk. These fluid
po-mo under-cooked tamales are not edible, they need to go back into
the steamer to get some backbone. Another hour under the fire should do
the trick. In general, from around 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours of
steaming should be enough, but just pay attention to your food.
At some point your eyes, nose, and brain will tell you that yeah, these
tamales are done! Time for eating!
Enjoy!
I tried to describe the tamal making process as best as I could, from
my practice and experience. Surely some of you will find something that
is just outrageously wrong. Yeah, you might have a point, whatever it
is.
This is how I do it, circa 2010. Remember, I am a vegetarian, so my
opinion is not to be trusted. I don't pretend to show you how its
properly done, I just wanted to share how I do it. Today. Tomorrow.
Maybe even after that. This is my method, take it for whatever its
worth.
