Christmas Tamales

For most of us, Christmas is a time of indulgent eating. Feasting and sampling far more than what we'd normally eat the rest of the year. It's become associated with 'the best', or 'the more the merrier'. Nowhere is this more true than right here in Arizona with the omnispresent tamale.

I'm a fan of tamales, never turning one down when it comes to eating one. But I've never made one, until this year. The true Mexican madre will begin making and freezing her tamales for the Christmas season as soon as the late summer or early fall and if she's got enough room in her freezer (it seems to be a sign of one-upmanship if you are lucky to have two or three freezers stuffed with tamales or their fixings) then she may have ten of dozens of tamales put away by Christmas.

Oh, they go fast however. If you are this same Mexican madre with the tamale stuffed freezer, then you do not show up to anyone's house during the Christmas season without a requisite bag of a dozen tamales bestowed upon the welcoming hostess. There were as many tamales offered as Christmas cookies where I come from. I'm quite sure that by New Year's, there won't be many tamale stuffed freezers left. They'll all be bare and waiting for more.

We've been fortunate to have met a lovely family that makes and sells their tamales. Given two days notice, Rene will have me replete with as many tamales as I request. We take them frozen back to the boys in Dillon Beach. We've feasted company on them. And we try to keep a dozen or two on hand in the freezer... just because.

But this Christmas season, I was given a very wonderful gift. My neighbor, Hope, offered to teach me to make tamales. She was thorough in her instruction and for several days before 'the Big Day' came, I was a) buying pork loin roast and beef roast and a huge bag of Mama Loco's corn husks and two pounds of manteca (lard) and on the proper day of the week(Wednesday afternoon here in Superior) a fresh bag of masa as soon as it was delivered off the truck, then b) opening the bag of corn husks and separating them and cleaning off any remaining 'hair' off the husks and c) cooking the roasts in slowcookers and saving the broth for the sauce. It was quite an operation, so that be Saturday morning, I felt I'd undertaken a whole new occupation: Making Tamales.

Hope is possibly the one of the premier tamale makers in town and I couldn't have learned from a better teacher. We started with the sauce, opening a can of Las Palmas red sauce (oh yes, these were red chile tamales that we made) and adding one part of shredded pork to two parts of shredded beef to a roux of vegetable oil and Bisquick, then just enough broth to impart the right liquidity. Then we started on the masa.

In a dishpan that was big enough to hold twenty pounds of masa, Hope creamed the lard, then broke up the masa mixture and added salt and baking powder and again, just enough broth to make it the consistency of a heavy pancake batter. (That's the crucial step, the right consistency.) Then she tested it by dropping a small spoonful in a glass of water. If the mixture floated, it was right for the tamale. If not, back to the mixing bowl adding more broth and lots more stirring.

Finally, we began the tamale making. A good tamale maker can crank out half a dozen a minute. A new tamale maker can do one in about three minutes. You pick up a corn husk and lay the wide end in the palm of your hand, the 'inside' of the corn husk is that part the mixture will go on, the 'outside' of the husk is the outside of the tamale. With a spoonful of masa, you start layering on the corn mixture across the bottom half of the corn husk. You don't want it to be too thick or it will spurt out of the tamale when it's rolled up. You don't want it to be too skimpy or you've missed the treat of the corn masa when you eat it. It's less than a quarter inch thick but thicker than an eighth inch thick and I guess when you get it right, that's the mark of a good tamale maker. Next you take a tablespoon or so of the red chile/meat mixture and spread it a third of the way down the tamale about a third of the way from where you started. A green olive or two can then be placed on the sauce. Now, starting at the lefthand side of the cornhusk, roll it up, enclosing the sauce and continuing rolling until you reach the end. Carefully fold the unfilled top end of the corn husk over the filled end, set your bundle upright in a pan and start rolling the next one. When you have enough to fill your steamer, steam a pan for an hour and a half, let them sit for half an hour and then you are ready to sample them. Downright heaven!

It's funny, but tamale ladies are quick to tell you how many they made that day. "Ten dozen!" an old lady down the street told me proudly one afternoon. "I couldn't sleep. I got up at four. And I make ten dozen by eight o'clock!" Or, "I've made five hundred since Thanksgiving!" another lady proudly told me. So I've been able to say, "My neighbor showed me how to make them and we got sixy!" (Yikes! I have a long way to go!)


I think with more practise, I could get good at these. They certainly are wonderful to eat. But I wonder if I want to get that good at making them. For I might replace my Christmas season of baking Christmas cookies with making mounds of Christmas tamales. I know it won't be hard finding somebody willing to eat them!