Hot tamale failure

Hilda and I made tamales on Saturday. This was my first tamale making experience. Hilda had done it before years ago. I saw the recipe on an episode of Cook’s Country on PBS. These were not Mexican tamales, but Delta hot tamales, where the Delta refers to the Mississippi River Delta in Cajun country.

We began by making a spice mix. This mix was included in the corn meal (notably not masa) outer covering, the meat mixture, and the stewing (not steaming) liquid that would become the sauce.

The spice mixture

The corn meal was mixed with butter, water, and the spice mixture.

Mixing the corn meal stuff

Hilda measured it in 1.5-Tablespoon aliquots.

Aliquoting the corn meal stuff

We mixed ground beef with spices, a bit of the corn meal mixture, garlic, water, and baking soda, and measured it out in 1.5 Tablespoon aliquots as well.

Aliquoting the meat stuff

The directions said to spread the corn meal stuff on the smooth side of the corn husk. Which side would that be? They looked the same to me. I was supposed to make a 3.5” square. This went a lot faster when I realized the blade of my offset spatula was exactly 3.5” long. I rolled the meat into a log and put it on the corn meal square.

Assembling the tamales

After rolling the tamale in the corn husk, we tied packets of six tamales together for stewing.

Stewing the tamales

After 30 minutes, we removed the tamales, boiled down the steaming liquid and thickened it with corn starch. We tried one tamale and it was okay. We saved the rest for supper.

I steamed the tamales to reheat them. Half of them stuck to the corn husk. Half of them didn’t. Hilda had a total disaster when all of her tamales stuck. We don’t know if it was the steaming or not finding the smooth side of the husk.

One of the tamales that came off of the corn husk with the not-good sauce

And the sauce was too salty, too spicy, and tasted bad. Completely not worth the night of heartburn that followed. It looked nice on the plate, but we’re declaring this one a failure. No need to save this recipe. I still have a gazillion corn husks. Maybe I’ll try Mexican tamales some time.