Eric

Tamales are the ultimate Mexican "comfort food" and they have been around for thousands of years. As I child, I learned how to make tamales from my grandmother, as she would orchestrate a tamale party at our house in the later years of her life. Tamales are very easy to make, but they're very labor intensive, and its just as easy to make 10 dozen tamales, as it is to make 1 dozen of them. The idea is throw a party, get many family and friends involved, and make a huge batch of tamales, so everybody will have tamales to take home and enjy.

Sharlene and I didn't exactly have a tamale party, but we made tamales over the space of three days in February, 2005. You can compress the 3 days into one day, if you desire, but the following article should give you a pretty good idea of how to make tamales.

Day One: You purchase the chicken, pork, corn husks, masa dough, peppers and everything else you need for your tamale project. At home, its time to pre-cook the pork and chicken.

Day Two: This is a day to chop vegetables and prepare the green and red salsa. While the salsa is being made, its time to soak the corn husks, and to prepare the meat filling.

Day Three: Here's where the masa meets the husk, as you spoon the masa dough on a corn husk, add tamale filling, sauce, wrap up the tamale and steam them. You'll be rewarded with a batch of perfect tamales.

After reading the article, you'll notice that all of this can be done in one day, providing you've purchased the ingredients in advance. I'm using the three day format as the last time we made tamales, we made them over a three day period, so it was easy to write this article the way we actually made our last batch of tamales.

If you have any questions, or comments about how to make tamales at home, feel free to email me.

Web page design has been created by eRench Productions, Inc., custom photography for any occasion...