Homemade Tamales - Woo-Hoo!

This weekend we made some Tamales, we have been using This Website as a guide everytime we had made them previously, but couldn't remember what it was and it took a while to find it again and so we decided to do a post, mostly to find it again.

But, we forgot to start taking pictures when we started so you get to read my ramblings first.

The first step is to get some meat cooked up, we use ground beef, pork, and chicken. The ground beef is probably the easiest, just cook it up in a skillet or however you like to cook it up. The pork and chicken we usually cook in a slow cooker. We use a 6-8 lb pork roast (this time was a weird bone in shoulder? roast, it worked fine) and a 3-5 lb roaster chicken. Cook them in the slow cooker until done.

Then Shred and discard not meaty portions.

Now you will need some ingredients:

1/2 c vegetable oil 
6 Tablespoon chili powder
3 Tablespoon garlic powder 
3 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 Tablespoon (or less) black pepper

2 Tablespoon salt. 

 Combine these in a sauce pan and heat:

 Then mix it in the meat by hand, depending on the amount of meat you have you can divide or multiply amounts of seasoning for your needs, this amount worked well for 3 lbs ground beef, and doubled for the amount of meat shown in the bowl.

 Oh, yeah get some corn husks and soak them in warm water, probably about 2 hours.

 Now get some Masa, it comes in 2 and 4 lb bags and this recipe uses 2 lbs and so you will figure out how that works, and add some seasonings, such as:
3 Tablespoons paprika
3 Tablespoons salt 
1 Tablespoon cumin
3 Tablespoons Chili Powder 
3 Tablespoons garlic powder
as stated earlier, these measures are adjustable and not in stone.

also, I had put the seasonings on top of the masa and it looked pretty and forgot to take the picture before I started mixing it.

 You will then add 2 cups of oil, and mix up and gradually add 2 quarts of broth 1 cup at a time.

  and mix by hand.

and keep your husband out of it, he will make a mess.

now when it is about the texture of peanut-butter  rub some on a husk that has been removed from the water and shake off excess water.

 it will look like this.

 now add some meat.

 and then roll it up like a tamale.

 and then fold up the empty tip like this and try to do it at the seam.

 if done correctly it will be blurry.

 you can place them in a stack like this.

 and cover with a damp towel until ready to steam.

 here is Skyler's head to show scale.

 to steam, stack in a steamer basket kind of like this.

 and then this,

 and then this,

 And finally it is full.

 place basket into pot with water, bring to boil and then reduce to simmer, cook for about 2 hours and make sure it doesn't boil dry, add water if the water gets low.

 after about 2 hours pull one out and check it after it has rested for 5 minutes, if done, remove from steam and then remove from basket, I place them on a cookie sheet, because I like cookies.

  Here is a close up of the last shot for some reason

We like to place them in freezer bags and freeze them for easy meal times later, it might be helpful to measure out amounts that would work best for your meals, family sizes may differ. These microwave nicely(or you can steam them or maybe bake or some other fancy way) and should keep for a year if it gets lost in the freezer, because that is the only way it will last a year.