Grandmas Mexican Tamales
Grandmas Mexican Tamales
As a Mexican there is many wonderful things that we are known for, but most famously Mexicans are known for are our great Mexican food dishes. Varying from chicken enchiladas, tosdas, tacos, chiles rellenos, and sopos; all these are delicious foods but the most common food during the holidays and any other time of the year would have to be tamales.
Tamales have the greatest of food varieties, there are so many combinations that tamales can be made up of and combined with any kind of side dish. For years I have been watching my grandmother and aunts make dozens of tamales as the year goes on, the process of making such an amazing dish is long and very time consuming requiring patience and hard work. Having to soak the corn husks in warm water for hours, enabling them to become soft enough to be move and able to work with. After being soaked for hours the corn husks much be separated individually making sure each one is good and have a perfect size to be stuffed. The next process is to make the tamale dough (masa). Dried red chili peppers and water are blend together in the blender then in a large bowl are mixed along with corn mixture, lard, and salt by hand until it becomes a reddish/brown color, and given just the right taste all made by grandma.
Then comes the creative part, tamales can be stuffed with anything you can think of. There are spicy tamales to even sweet tamales it all depends on how you decide to stuff it. The tamales that are most made at my grandmas are chicken, beans, pig & deer, and also cheese tamales. The chicken is cooked a day before the dough and everything else was done, grandma has her special way of making chicken for these tamales (she has never told us how to make it, so we still have that way of wanting to know how it’s made.) The beans have to be pre-cooked before being stuffed into the tamales, so the beans are hand-picked to be big and each one good enough to go into the boiling pot of water for 3
As a Mexican there is many wonderful things that we are known for, but most famously Mexicans are known for are our great Mexican food dishes. Varying from chicken enchiladas, tosdas, tacos, chiles rellenos, and sopos; all these are delicious foods but the most common food during the holidays and any other time of the year would have to be tamales.
Tamales have the greatest of food varieties, there are so many combinations that tamales can be made up of and combined with any kind of side dish. For years I have been watching my grandmother and aunts make dozens of tamales as the year goes on, the process of making such an amazing dish is long and very time consuming requiring patience and hard work. Having to soak the corn husks in warm water for hours, enabling them to become soft enough to be move and able to work with. After being soaked for hours the corn husks much be separated individually making sure each one is good and have a perfect size to be stuffed. The next process is to make the tamale dough (masa). Dried red chili peppers and water are blend together in the blender then in a large bowl are mixed along with corn mixture, lard, and salt by hand until it becomes a reddish/brown color, and given just the right taste all made by grandma.
Then comes the creative part, tamales can be stuffed with anything you can think of. There are spicy tamales to even sweet tamales it all depends on how you decide to stuff it. The tamales that are most made at my grandmas are chicken, beans, pig & deer, and also cheese tamales. The chicken is cooked a day before the dough and everything else was done, grandma has her special way of making chicken for these tamales (she has never told us how to make it, so we still have that way of wanting to know how it’s made.) The beans have to be pre-cooked before being stuffed into the tamales, so the beans are hand-picked to be big and each one good enough to go into the boiling pot of water for 3