BEST AUTHENTIC MEXICAN TAMALES EVER!

Years ago, I had on my bucket list to make homemade tamales.  The Mr. helped me wrap them.

Cut to now and I was talking to a great friend of mine who loves spending time in the kitchen.  When I mentioned the tamales, she suggested that we make them together.





Here are the supplies.

 

The day before assembling, she cooked the pork and I cooked the chicken.  Once cooled, both of us shredded our meat.

 

The night before, my friend soaked the corn husks in water.  We then combined the meats and added the vast amount of seasonings.  I will tell you, it seems like the meat is going to be spicy, but trust me, follow the recipe. The flavor is amazing.

 



 

Next, we seasoned the masa mix and blended it with chicken broth until it had the consistency of peanut butter.  The masa mixture also is loaded with spices.  Follow the recipe to the T.



 

My friend laid out a towel.  This made the job so much easier to wrap the tamales.

 

We laid out the corn husk

After placing about a 1/4 cup of the masa mixture at the wider part of the husk, spread it out evenly.



 

Lay your meat mixture down the middle of the masa.

 



 

Meet both sides of the husk and roll it together. 

 



 

Once they were all wrapped, we laid them on their sides in a pasta steamer.

 



 



Placing a small metal bowl into the bottom of the pan and fill with a few inches of water and make sure not to have it come up to the top of the bowl.

Insert the steamer of tamales.

The recipe says to steam for 2 hours.  Before I had steamed my first batch for one hour.  I think these came out too dry, so I would advise you to steam them for one hour, take one out and test it to see if they are done.

 

 

The finished tamale.

 

They were all laid out on racks to cool them.

 



She froze them on a cookie sheet and when they were frozen, they took them out and used their freezer bag machine to store them for later use.

When I was ready to serve them, I thawed them for a few hours and steamed them just to get them warm.

 

Because this batch seemed dry, the next bunch of tamales were laid in a glass Pyrex casserole dish, covered with chili with no beans and a lot of grated cheese.

I would suggest that this is a 2 woman job.  Besides bonding, we had a great time making this authentic recipe.

 Sorry about the irregular spacing happening again in these posts.  I tried to reduce the blank space but had no success.