It turns out the answer is "A LOT." Now, they weren't "corned beef" difficult, or anything, but there's a lot of assembly line work as well as two cooking process and ingredient preparation. On the plus side, you can make a ton of them and freeze them or bring them to a party, or what have you.
I had no idea how they were actually made other than that you wrapped them in corn husks at some point in the process. My first step, as always, was the research. Google turned up a lot of recipes and I browsed them quickly for general information, such as the fact that you steam them! I also quickly found that Alton Brown has made them, and looked up his recipe. It looked pretty good, except for a few small things.
First, it is for a large number of tamales (4-5 dozen.) That's not really a big problem, as I can just halve it.
Second, it's for HOT tamales. I have no problem with that, but as I've said here before, my wife isn't big on spices. So I'll have to adjust it.
Last, his is for shredded beef tamales. In general, I don't like shredded beef. There is something about the texture I don't care for. I wanted to make ground beef tamales.
I looked around for ground beef tamale recipes and picked up some good tips, but in general they didn't have good spice profiles. I really liked all the various spices in Alton's recipe; smoked paprika, garlic powder, cumin. Most of the ones I found on the web didn't go much beyond chili powder. I also liked Alton's masa recipe.
In the end I went with a Frankenstein creation; mostly Alton's recipe, but with a lot of my own ideas. I used Alton's masa recipe and his spice list, but with ground beef, which required a lot of different cooking methods.
Here's what my recipe looks like:
- 1 tbs chili powder
- 1 tbs kosher salt
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed
- 1 pounds hamburger
- 2 tbs vegetable oil
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
For the wrappers:
- 2 dozen dried corn husks
For the cornmeal dough:
- 1 pounds masa, approximately 3 cups
- 1 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
- 4 ounces lard, approximately 1/2 cup
- 2 cups beef broth
Shopping was fun. There are a number of good Mexican groceries in my area. I stopped at the one in Pike Place first and bought the husks, masa (limed cornmeal,) and the lard (the glorious lard!) I have never worked with any of these as ingredients before so I was pretty excited; especially for the lard. There's something naughty about using such a fattening ingredient in these modern "healthy eating" times. I felt the same way about all the butter and cream in the butter chicken, and now I was buying LARD! I also picked up the smoked paprika and the cumin seeds from Market Spice.
Also on the agenda was buying a new steamer. I bought one years ago to make rice, but it was pretty cheap and has long needed replacement. A quick trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond set me up with a nice 8 quart pot with a steamer inset. I love buying cooking equipment!
Winco supplied me with everything else I needed, as always. In fact, it turned out that I could have picked up the masa, husks, and lard there as well. Good to know the next time I need them!
Early this morning I started with the husks. I filled a mixing bowl with warm water and put the husks in. I used a wide one, since the husks are pretty big. I then put another, smaller mixing bowl on top of them with some water in it to hold them down. You want them submerged if possible so the whole husk re-hydrates.
Then we took our daughter to see Tangled. She was fascinated and sat through the whole thing. That's a pretty good accomplishment for a two year old. I really liked it, as well. Disney still hasn't lost a step.
When we got back, I started in on the real work. Since I was switching from shredded to ground beef, I had greatly reduced my cooking time. Essentially, my plan was to make a kind of taco meat to fill the tamales with, using a modification of Alton's recipe. If you compare my recipe above with Alton's you'll see that in general I used about a third of what he did. That's both because I was only cooking half the amount of meat, and also because I wasn't going to be doing such a long cooking process that needed to penetrate a roast.
I started by cooking the onions and garlic in a bit of vegetable oil, just until they softened. Then I threw in the pound of ground beef and the spices. I cooked it for about 5-10 minutes; until I was sure it was well cooked, but still moist.
While it was cooking, I started on the masa. I mixed the masa with the salt and baking powder, and then mixed the lard in with my hands. It works really well, I must say. Then I poured in the beef broth. Alton's recipe calls for using the remaining fluid from boiling the beef, but since I wasn't doing that step I used about a cup of beef broth and a cup of water as a replacement.
Some of the recipes online described the finished dough as being similar to thick mashed potatoes, and so that is what I was going for. It turned out very close.
Now began the mass production part of the recipe. You have to roll up the tamales one at a time, and each one takes a bit of time. It was a learning process, and the last ones I made were far superior to the first ones I made. Hopefully I can pass this knowledge on to you.
I found a site that had pictures of the entire process. I followed it precisely, but incorrectly at first. Looking at the pictures it's hard to get a good sense of scale. As it turns out, the husks are not uniform in size. I started with one of the larger ones I had and filled to the same proportions as the ones in the pictures. Also, my impression in general was that tamales were fairly large, say the size of a fat enchilada. This had created some confusion in my mind when I read all these recipes that promised 6 dozen tamales. That seemed like a massive amount of food.
It is also fairly difficult to tell from the pictures how thick of a layer of masa to put on the husk. I had some measurements from Alton's recipe of using about 2 tablespoons, which helped me to hone in on the proper amount eventually. However, the first few tamales I made ended up being about twice as big as all the rest of them, and they had pretty think "shells." They cooked up just fine, though.
So my advice from experience here is to follow the suggested amounts. Use about 2 tablespoons of dough and about a tablespoon of filling. Spread it pretty thin, too. It will fluff up a bit during cooking. You want to make sure that you can wrap the dough all the way around the filling. The picture above is the first one I made. I quickly learned as well to push the dough out all the way to the edge on one side. It makes rolling it up so much easier. You want to leave a gap at the bottom, though.
It's quite a job to roll up all the tamales. I only ended up with about 18 in all, and I can't imaging doing 6 dozen. Luckily I had some help!
The rolled tamales were placed carefully upright in the colander insert for the pot. There's a smaller steamer insert, but it's pretty short, so I just kept the water level down and used the pasta insert.
In order to make sure they all stayed upright, I ended up using the extra husks I'd already soaked. I folded them up and filled the space.
I brought the water to a boil and then turned it down. Every half hour I checked on them and added some water to the pot. It took about an hour and a half until I decided they looked done. I removed on and let it cool for 5 minutes before unwrapping it. The masa was nice and firm, so I declared the batch done!
Result: Pretty good. The texture was perfect. The meat turned out well. There's plenty of flavor here, but they still seem bland to me for some reason; like something's missing. I added sour cream and hot sauce to mine and that brought them up quite a bit. I think, though, that something like enchilada sauce would have been just about perfect. They also would have gone well with a side of something. Maybe some beans or cheese. Here's a gratuitous picture of my daughter enjoying hers, though.
I'm glad I did this, of course, but I don't know if I'll do it again any time soon. It might be good party food, though, and if I can zero in on some other flavors it would be much improved. If I do it again, I'll make a sauce and try a different meat.
But it's no butter chicken...
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