Tamales Archives - Partial Ingredients

Tamales are a great traditional Mexican dish that is made with masa (corn flour), and stuffed with a meat or bean filling. They are then wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves and steamed. For the filling, I decided on a nice pork shoulder that I seasoned with savory annatto seeds, cumin, and allspice–the same recipe for the Cochinita Pibil Tacos. I made Chicken Tamales before, and I wanted to try pork. I decided to use a roasted tomatillo salsa and queso fresco again since salsa verde is so good with pork.

This dish is labor intensive and requires some planning–about 2 days. The first day is to get all the ingredients together and cook the filling. The second day is assembling the tamales and steaming them and of course eating them! When the tamales are in the steamer all you have to do is wait. Once the wait is over it is time to unwrap and enjoy some tasty tamales.

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Tamales are a Mexican food made of masa (corn flour) and stuffed with any number of fillings. Tamales are an old food, meaning that it was probably eaten by Aztecs and Mayans as early as 8000 BC. Making them is a pretty involved process and it requires some time to get everything prepared and cooked–about 3-4 hours. I had a lot of fun making these, and when I was forming the dough into the corn husk I could picture someone from a different time and background doing this very same activity (which was pretty cool). The tamales turned out really well. The dough had a nice fluffy texture and the filling had a spicy, savory flavor. The filling was a tex-mex style shredded chicken and sweet corn. I seasoned the dough with cumin, paprika, and cinnamon. The chile verde was tasty and pretty simple to make too. I topped the tamales with a little monterey jack cheese and sour cream.

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Cochinita Pibil Tamales with Roasted Tomatillo Salsa and Queso Fresco

Chile Verde Tamales de Pollo