Tamale Junkie

Do you know how there are some foods that you fall in love with and are then on an endless quest to find a good source for that food? That's me and tamales.

I think my love affair with tamales began when I was a little girl of five and my grandmother would pick me up from school to spend the weekend at her house. On the way home we would stop at the 7-11 and buy a tamale from a crockpot on the counter. It was an XLNT brand tamale and the wrapper was white plastic. They weren't tamales in a traditional sense, but the machine extruded version that you find in the south and in cans. (But XLNT is better than any canned version I could ever find.) But they were hot and fun to unwrap and had the basic elements of a tamale, which is cornmeal exterior and filling. I loved our little weekly ritual and I loved tamales.

When I got older my father would occasionally come home from work with a dozen or so homemade tamales. These were bigger and had a much larger dough to filling ration than what I had been used to but they were so much better than the extruded kind. The mother of one of my dad's co-worker's made these beauties and sold them to every now and then. What made these tamales so good to me was that the masa dough (the cornmeal part of the tamale) was spiced along with the filling. In fact, the masa was so good the filling was just the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Years of trying other commercial tamales inevitable ended in disappointment. Even most "homemade" tamales failed to live up to my taste buds high standards. After one particularly bad experience with a Cuban tamale (I'm not knocking the Cuban version, just expressing my preference for the Mexican version) I decided to learn how to make my own tamales.

Making tamales is a labor intensive, time consuming process, which is why they are mainly made for holidays and celebrations. I use a sturdy mixer to mix the shortening with the masa and it still takes forever to get it to the proper stage (you should be able to float a piece of the tamal dough on the surface of a glass of water in order for it to be the proper texture - which takes a lot of beating of the dough. I don't know how people do it without a heavy duty electric mixer!) Between making the filling, mixing the dough, assembling the tamales and steaming them for an hour, the whole process takes me at least two days. But since I can season the tamal dough the way I like it, I make tamales once a year or so. That's because when I'm done it takes me a year to forget how hard the process really is.

So in between my bouts of tamale making, I search the world for a ready made tamale to satisfy me. Most Mexican restaurants serve frozen tamales which are barely mediocre. I have yet to find a connection to a good homemade tamale, although some people roam my neighborhood occasionally, selling their tamales door to door. Since I'm pretty sure they aren't abiding by all of the health laws and I'm unsure of all of their ingredients, I shy away from the tamale black market. So I buy brand after brand of commercial tamales in search of a decent substitute for homemade.

Which leads me to my current location in Alamogordo, New Mexico. As I roamed the aisles of the Lowe's grocery store (I love grocery stores, and an unfamiliar chain brings on a field trip type thrill)I spotted a selection of tamales. Not surprising, since I'm not too far from both the Texas and the Mexican border. Now I prefer my tamales to be filled with beef and I like them on the spicy side, so I was happy to find a brand called Pedro's that made a spicy beef tamale. Pedro's motto is "Sirloin in a shuck" so I'm hoping that means they use good beef. Small tamales wrapped in a corn husk and bundled by the half dozen. I don't mind small tamales, that's the way I like them. being impatient, I microwaved mine (following the directions to wrap them in a wet paper towel first, to give them a good steam). They were such tasty little tamales, the closest I've had to my homemade ones that I've found so far. They weren't as spicy as mine but I think I may be in love anyway. Pedro's Tamales is based in Lubbock, Texas and if you check out their website Pedro looks like the kind of guy who knows his tamales.

So, in addition to eating gallons of Blue Bell Ice Cream, now I have to eat dozens of tamales. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it!