PART I: THE PORKENING

As of right now, the tamales are finished. I thought it would be fun to do a cooking thread in real time, but apparently some people have a problem with this. If you are one of those people, I have received a legal injunction that prevents you from using this recipe, and my enormous legal team will come after you if you even think about doing so.


AS PROMISED, YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR TAMALE MONEY SHOT. ENJOY.


This tamale recipe has arisen via a ton of trial and error, and it never fails to please. It involves quite a bit of time, usually around 24 hours. However, most of it’s just sitting around waiting for the pork to cook. The actual time spent in the kitchen comes out to be around 3 hours.

Since it takes such a long time to cook, I’m going to post the recipe in two parts. The first part concerns the cooking of the pork. I did that last night, and that part follows here. The second installment will be the actual tamale-making process, which I plan to do tonight.

This recipe will make about six dozen tamales with accompanying chili sauce. That’s a bunch of tamales, but they freeze perfectly.

Making tamales is a great thing to do for a party; you can start the pork a day in advance, and then have your guests participate in the actual tamale construction the next day. The benefits are twofold: you get to duck much of the manual labor involved, and most people have never made their own tamales and find it to be a fun and interesting experience. One caveat, though; you’re going to want to start the tamale construction about three hours before you plan to eat, so have your friends show up early. The way that usually goes with my parties is that I send out an email saying “we’re doing tamales, so you should show up at around 5:00 so we can eat at around 8:00”. My friends, of course, show up at around 8:00 asking if the tamales are ready yet. We end up eating at 11:00, after a short lecture by me on the value of reading your email thoroughly.

Anyway, on with the recipe.

For starters, get yourself a nice, solid cast iron Dutch oven (lol fart joke). You can do a lot of this with a combination of other cooking vessels, but I can’t think of another option that you can do all of it in, and minimizing cleanup is always a plus.



You’ll also need a pot in which to steam the tamales, but that bit comes in later. Basically anything that can hold them and make steam should work. I’ll be using this here big pasta pot with built-in strainer.



Next, we’ll need a piece of meat. I’m using a boneless leg of pork here, as I’ve found by trial and error that it is by FAR the best piece of meat for tamales. You might be tempted to buy a pork loin roast for this recipe, but you MUST resist that temptation. Loin roasts don’t have enough fat and connective tissue for this recipe, and your tamales will be dry and sucky. You have been warned.




Next, we’re going to cut up a couple of yellow onions and cook them in some corn oil until they’re a medium shade of brown.



Apparently this pig was killed while wearing fishnet pantyhose, so we’ll need to cut those off.



Now we brown the pork a bit, just to get that little bit of extra flavor. You can just scoot the onions to the side for this, they’ll be fine.





At this point, the dog should wander in and start making eyes at you because he smells pork. This is perfectly normal, ignore it.



Okay, now we’re going to dump in a ton of stuff. Most of this is available from the ethnic food aisle at the local market. My local market, anyway. We’ve got a can of diced tomatoes (you can use whole, they’re going to be pureed anyway), so let’s dump that in. Next is about a cup of green salsa. My favorite is Embasa (shown here), followed by La Costena. I think Herdez and La Victoria taste like shit, and I avoid the American stuff like the plague.





We’re also going to chop up about five ancho chiles (taking out the stems and most of the seeds) and a few arbol chiles and toss them in. You should get the chiles into cornflake-sized pieces. I find that scissors are far more efficient than a knife for this. However, I’ve shown the chiles with a knife here just to confuse you.






To all of this we’re going to add an envelope of chili powder (I guess that’s about ¼ cup, but I’m not sure), an equivalent amount of garlic powder, two tablespoons or so of cumin, some black pepper, a dash of cayenne, and about a tablespoon of salt.



Add enough water to completely cover the meat, and then season to taste. The liquid is not going to cook off much at all, and so we want this liquid to taste almost as salty/spicy as the final product. We are going to cook it down a bit at the end, though, so go a little bit easy.


Now put the lid on that mofo and put it in a 200 degree oven. Yes, that’s 200 degrees Fahrenheit. This is all about cooking the pork slowly over an extended period of time.




TAMALES PART II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

You should turn the pork over using some tongs at least once during the cooking process, preferably a few times. As time goes on, you will have to be increasingly careful in doing this. You’re going to want it to be in as few pieces as possible so that it’s easy to remove from the liquid later, and it gets tender enough that it actually becomes difficult to turn it over without shredding it.

Now it’s 20 hours later. If you absolutely must, you can start the pork early one morning and then do the tamales that afternoon, but the results just aren’t quite as good. 16-24 hours is the time required to get the most out of your tamale experience, and trust me it’s worth the wait. By the end this time, your house should be completely filled with the overwhelming smell of delicious spicy pork and you will be salivating in anticipation.

We’re going to take our dried corn husks and run some hot water down into them to make them easier to separate.



Once they’re separated, we put them into a large, flat dish with enough boiling water to cover them. This is so that the husks will be soft enough to open out flat and spread masa onto later.



Now for the masa mix. We’re using Maseca masa mix, corn oil, cumin, fresh ground black pepper, salt, and garlic powder. There is no real measuring going on here, just put a buttload of masa into a bowl, season to taste, add water, and give the the ol’ claw. There are some recipes out there that call for you to add the meat drippings to your masa mix, but we’re skipping that for a couple of reasons: first, our meat drippings are going to be reddish brown, which would make for funky looking tamales, and second, we have other plans for that-there pork juice. We add water slowly while working the masa by hand until it’s the appropriate consistency. We’re also going to put in about a quarter of a cup of corn oil, just to keep the masa from sticking to the husks. When the dough is properly hydrated it should still be a little sticky, but you should be able to form it into balls and have them stay together. Once it’s all mixed up, we’re going to let it sit for a while to fully hydrate.






Now it’s time to bring the pork out. Notice how the liquid has turned a nice, dark chili color. Eeeeexcellent.



If all has gone well, you should be able to drive a wooden spoon right into the deepest part of your meat.



Now, with a fork and knife, we’re going to shred the hell out of it. You could pull it apart along the grain of the meat just using spoons, but you’ll still need a knife to cut across the grain. This is also the point to add a little extra seasoning, if so desired.



But wait, what about that chili sauce I promised? All we have to do for that is to put the Dutch oven on the stove top and give it a bit of a boil. Once it’s cooked down until the flavors are the right strength (which will be anywhere between ten seconds and thirty minutes, sample often and carefully) we toss in about a cup of the Maseca flour and hit the whole mess with a stick blender. Blend the crap out of it until it becomes very smooth and tasty looking. Turn the heat off and let it cool; it will thicken as it comes down in temperature.





At this point, the dog is really starting to freak out.



Now for the tamales themselves. We like to set up a station apiece with a bowl of masa mix, a bowl of pork, a work surface, and a rubber spatula, with the steamer in between the two of us. They sell these things at the store that are called “tamale spreaders”, but in our experience they’re worse than useless. Absolute waste of money. We’ve also tried to spread the masa by hand, but that’s just a pain in the ass and doesn’t work too well. The larger the rubber spatula the smoother it spreads, so go with a big one.



All right! Separate out one of the larger pieces of corn husk. Gently spead it out flat, and spread a thin layer of masa over it. We want about 1/8 inch of masa, spread all the way to the right edge (you can reverse the sides if you like) and not quite all the way to the other, from the top of the husk down about four inches.



Now we lay out a line of our delicious pork about an inch from the right edge. If your pork turns out to be a little dry at this point, you can add in just enough of the chili sauce from above to coat it. This is a rare occurrence, however.






Now fold over the right side, and keep rolling until your tamale is a little tube.

Fold the floppy non-tamale end over, and lean it in your steamer pot. Some people like to tie the tamales up and/or put them in special racks, but it really isn’t necessary with this sort of preparation.





Repeat a zillion times, until the tamales are packed in like people on a Tokyo subway.



Just like a Tokyo subway, when you run out of room for tamales to stand up you can lay them across the top. It’s best if you can still get them at a slight angle, though.



Once all of your tamales are in the pot, it’s a good idea to take the remaining corn husks and build a little thatch roof over them. This is so that water that condenses on the lid of the steamer will mostly roll down the sides rather than falling down into your tamales, which would wash away a lot of delicious flavor.



Lid that bitch up, and put it on the stove. We usually steam them for at least an hour and a half, but two is better if you can wait that long.



One problem that can arise at this point is that the water will boil down. You should try to avoid this by checking your water level every ten minutes or so, but accidents happen.
Since essence of corn is being steeped into this water all the while, this event will be heralded by the odor of burning corn. It’s not a total disaster, though; it takes a long time to burn any of that flavor into a tamale. Just scrub off the burnt corn residue, add more water and go right back to it. The pot is going to be a serious bitch to clean and will almost certainly set off your smoke detector, but the tamales themselves should be fine.


If you’re not squeamish about letting the dog lick the Dutch oven, now’s the time to transfer the chili sauce to another container and let him have at it.



If the chili is good, he will respond by belching audibly.



Apparently this batch passes muster.



TAMALES PART III: ELECTRIC BEAGLE TREE

The kitchen is now filled with steam.



All right, they’re just about ready. Some batches take longer than others, and this one was sure taking its time. I usually just pull one out after a couple of hours to make sure the texture is right. You have to cool them before you can really tell, though.
Anyway, here’s the finished tamales in husk.



And here's an idea of how many tamales come from one batch.



And here they are garnished and looking pretty.



Oh, and I promised a “tamale money shot”. Here’s that.




And that's that. I hope you enjoy this recipe!