There’s nothing quite like a Tamale making party. I have had a hankering to do this for a while, after a friend told me she made some Tamales. So, I began researching recipes, the process, and found it is quite easy. Easy it was, although equally time consuming. I vastly underestimated the prep work needed to make 100+ tamales. What’s new. That is largely due to the fact that I was prepping for three people to take home a decent amount of tamales. And I made three fillings. And I work full time. And we had just returned from Portland. It reminds me of myself on Christmas day, in my nice clothes, frantically toasting and then smashing homemade breadcrumbs in order to use them as a topping for my Brussels sprouts (it was worth it). I definitely create my own drama in the kitchen, usually by means of underestimating cooking times and last minute plans.
Making tamales, though, really is fairly simple. You need masa (ground corn dough), corn husks and fillings. The dough and the fillings can be made the day before and ready for assembling. The dough. It initally gave me some problems, but that was largely due to the recipe asking for fresh masa. Fresh masa is not the same thing as the masa that you buy packaged at the store, learned that one the hard way. But what you will need is lard, lots of lard. See the fluffy white stuff above, yep, its lard. Not as tasty as it looks. Or easy to get off your hands. Here’s the other thing, when you decide to make over 100 tamales, be prepared to make the dough in about 500 stages. That means you will have to strew flour and lard all over your kitchen while you make 8 batches. Consider your self warned.
The best part of tamales, though. No matter what kinda of day you were having, mine was bad, when you sit down to actually roll the tamales with your friends, all that goes away. It is relaxing and fun to work with your hands while talking and sipping drinks. Knowing that we made these, painstakingly, one by one. And then we ate way too much.
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kat, thanks for all your hard work. it was a great night (after benjamin stopped crying, right?;) and the tamales are wonderful.
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