Hot Tamale!

With the holidays quickly approaching, I thought what could be better than talking about tamales; a traditional Hispanic food made with corn dough, filled with an assortment of meats, cheeses, and chilies and then wrapped in a corn husk.

According to My Hot Tamale!, tamales can be traced back as early as 5000 BC. They served as a nutritious and portable food for Aztec, Mayan, and Incan warriors.

Tamales are a very popular food item during Christmas as a part of Mexican tradition. According to MexGrocer.com on “Noche Buena” or Christmas Eve, families gather together and eat a feast of dishes including tamales, rice, chiles rellenos, menudo or roast pig or turkey. Their feasts also including hot fruit of cider punches.


Every year at my parent’s house in Scottsdale, my family is lucky enough to receive a huge batch of tamales from our family friend. My mom’s friend is Mexican-American and always cooks several tamales to last through the holiday season and they are so delicious!

Tamales have become extremely popular as a food item for Christmas; you can even pre-order them online and have them shipped to you. San Antonio’s Delicious Tamales offers nationwide shipping. Established in 1980, they are the largest tamale manufacturer in San Antonio and just kicked off their tamale-season yesterday. If you would like to purchase tamales before the holidays, call 1-800-TAMALE-1 or visit their website.

If you would rather make your own fresh tamales, there are several simple recipes to follow…but first you need to collect all of the proper equipment and ingredients.

Before making your tamales, you need specific equipment. Here is a list of equipment you need to make the perfect, tasty tamale.

You will need:
1 large capacity steamer
Measuring cups
Tongs
Measuring spoons
Draining spoon
Spreader

…It's pretty easy. Most of you will have these items in your household already.

The ingredients for tamales are also straight forward.

All basic tamales include:
Corn Oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
Ground Cumin
Cumin Seeds
Chili Powder/Chilies
Baking Powder
Broth
Paprika
Corn Masa
(such as MaSeCa)
Real Corn Husks


Locally, Fry’s Food Store located at 555 E. Grant Rd, has all the ingredients you need to make a delicious tamale including corn masa and corn husks. They even have an instructional video playing to show you how to make tamales.

The tamales must also include whatever filling you prefer, such as pork, chicken, ground beef, chorizo, cheese, or green chillies. Below, I have listed links for recipes to make these different types of tamales.

Beef Tamale
Chorizo Tamale
Pork Tamale
Green Chilies and Cheese Tamale
Chicken Tamale
Green Corn Tamale

A step-by-step process on how to make Corn Masa.




Remember, It’s not a Christmas without tamales!!