The Genius of Tamales

Spring is in full swing here in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts. My heart swells with contentment when I look out toward the hills and see the trees like lime green and chartreuse fireworks covering more and more of the shrinking wintery backdrop. The birds are getting busy and so am I. Between working 4 days a week, my two apprenticeships, my herb classes and going on foraging expeditions for wild spring foods and medicinals (which I will write about soon, I promise!), I hardly have time to prepare a good hardy meal anymore. After experimenting with rendering lard, I couldn’t bear not to set aside time to make a giant batch of tamales. Though it’s quite an involved process (about 3 hours start to finish), it makes for many quick meals later since they keep well refrigerated and frozen are ultra-transportable in their neat little corn husk packages. In fact, the tamale was invented probably around 7000 BC out of a need for a more portable food when wars between Aztec, Mayan and Incan tribes demanded migration. 

My first experience making tamales was 5 years ago with my dear friend Nicole just before we set out for our month-long road trip across the U.S. She was the one with the tamale making know-how (she was also my tortilla teacher), and she guided the process as we carefully crafted dozens of adorable bundles. We pulled out of my parents’ driveway at 4am the next day feeling ready for anything. We kept the tamales in the back of my infamous station wagon, Phannie, in the styrofoam “food box,” which we sometimes remembered to add ice to. Along with the indispensable jar of cashew butter gifted to us by our friend Lia, those tamales fed us from Massachusetts through most of the Southern states.

My mother-in-law is half Mexican and she remembers her summers in Mexico as a child, when she and the other children would buy sweet tamales – pink dough filled with strawberries and cream – from the street vendors. I seriously can’t wait to try making those….. But enough stories, let’s get to the dough of the matter. 

Tamale dough is composed of a three of the most deeply-nourishing traditional foods: broth, lard and masa. You’ve heard me talk about bone broth in a previous post, with it’s joint and gut-healing properties, so I’ll let you explore that one on your own. Lard is rendered pig fat, and although it sounds thoroughly repulsive, try cooking with it and you’ll be hooked. It adds incredible flavor to fried foods and it’s safe to fry with because of it’s high smoke point (unlike most vegetable oils). It makes perfect flakey pie crust and biscuits, and contrary to popular belief, it’s actually good for you. Eating a healthy dietary source of cholesterol from whole foods like lard, reduces the body’s need to produce cholesterol and helps with inflammation management and hormone production.  With a quarter the saturated fat and more than twice the monounsaturated fat as butter, it’s clear that lard has gained a bad rap for no good reason except to promote the sales of trans fats like Crisco. Sickening. I recommend rendering your own lard (very easy in a crockpot!) so that you can be sure your pigs came from happy places.

The third and final ingredient of the tamale trifecta is masa. Masa means “dough” in Spanish, but it also refers to corn flour which has been nixtamalized. “Nixtamal” is the Spanish word (originally from the Aztec language, Nahuatl) for the process in which corn is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater, then hulled and ground. This process makes the essential nutrient, niacin, available in the corn. European invaders in Mexico and Central America did not see the need for nixtamalization, and as a result many of them were plagued by Pellagra, a horrific disease caused by niacin deficiency. Nixtamalization also reduces contamination by mycotoxins, fungal contaminants. And here’s the magical part: if you add water to plain cornmeal, it won’t make a dough (and it won’t taste like much). The chemical changes that occur through nixtamalization allow the ground flour to form a dough with water. The corn’s flavor and aroma are also greatly improved by the process. 

So there you have it. Three genius old-world foods – broth, lard and masa – come together to form the most integral and filling part of the tamale, the dough. I think you’ll be impressed as I was at how the dough transforms from soft and sticky into a solid yet very bitable mass when the tamales are streamed. It’s a brilliant design, really. The filling can be whatever you want, which is another brilliant thing about this food. My shiitake and chicken filling is not particularly Mexican, but that’s not as important as liking the flavors that you choose, since you might as well make a huge batch if you’re going go to the effort to make them at all. This is another great example of the food philosophy (a combination of Michael Pollen’s and my own) which I’ve talked about in previous posts: eating only small amounts of meat, more as a flavoring than a main feature, and using the less-desired parts of the animal, as with lard and broth, in order to use “the whole hog”. The amount of filling in each tamale is surprisingly small. The equivalent of one small chicken can yield about 50 tamales (20-25 meals), and can be used both for broth and filling.

Pardon my wordiness, it’s hard to stop raving about tamales. Now, for the recipe……..

Road Trip Tamales with Chicken and Shiitake Filling

makes about 50 tamales

• 1 package corn husks (find these at Latin Markets) and hot water for soaking
• 8 cups “Maseca” or “Masa Harina”
• 1 Tbsp. sea salt
• 1 Tbsp. chile powder
• 2 cups lard, preferably homemade, or non-hydrogenated shortening
• 2 quarts of chicken broth OR make your own using scraps from the filling (I will explain how to do this, just be sure to save all your onion peels, mushroom stems etc from prepping the veggies)

Filling:

• 4-4.5lbs chicken thighs, bone in, pasture-raised if possible 
• 1lb. fresh shiitake mushrooms (or a mix of shiitake and button), sliced
• 6 stalks celery, finely chopped
• 3 large onions, sliced
• 10 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 Tbsp. lard or high-heat cooking oil
• 3/4 cup dry sherry or dry white wine
• 1 Tbsp. marjoram (use oregano or thyme in a pinch)
• 1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• a few good cranks of freshly ground pepper
• water

1. Before doing anything else, pour hot water over the corn husks (this speeds up soaking which takes 12 hours in cold water) and weight them down so they are all submerged. 
2. Make the filling. Heat lard or oil in a large skillet or dutch oven on med-high heat. Once hot, add the onions, and cook, stirring until soft. Next add the celery, garlic, marjoram, salt and pepper, and cook a few more minutes. Stir in the mushrooms and the sherry. Once all the veggies are soft and aromatic, nestle the chicken thighs into the veggie mixture and add water to just cover chicken. (if your pan is such that the chicken sticks out above the water level, just flip it half way through cooking.) Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and poach for 20-25 minutes until chicken is cooked through.
3. Carefully remove the thighs from the poaching liquid with tongs and set them aside. Strain the remaining liquid into a stock pot, and set aside the strained mushrooms and veggies. Once the thighs are cool enough, remove meat from the bones and shred it with two forks.  
4. Make the broth (ignore this step if you are going to use pre-made broth): take your stock pot of strained poaching liquid and add water to make a little more than 2 quarts. Add your veggie scraps and the chicken bones and simmer for another 20-30 minutes. Strain and set aside.
5. Make the dough: In a large bowl, combine the masa harina with the salt and chile. Cut in the lard until the dough forms a course meal (I do this with my hands). Then, a little at a time, mix in the broth until the dough is soft and sticky, but not wet. It should feel somewhat like soft cookie dough. 
6. Assembly: Remove the soaked corn husks from the water. Look for a few of them that are small or ripped and tear them into thin strips – these will tie the tamales together. Have everything set out – your husks, ties, dough, and fillings. Having multiple people for this step will make things go a lot faster. Lay out a husk, pointy end toward you, and spread a golf-ball sized piece of dough onto the upper right section of the husk with your fingers. Place some filling vertically in the center (you want the dough to close around it, so don’t put too much). Then, roll the husk over itself from right to left until the dough touches itself. Tuck the right edge of the husk under the dough and keep rolling (keep it tight!). Fold the bottom of the husk up over the closed edge and hold it together while you tie one of the husk strips around the whole thing (this is the trickiest part). Then keep doing that until one or more of the ingredients runs out.
7. Steaming: fill a very large pot, with about an inch of water. Use a steaming rack or a layer of corn husks to keep the tamales from touching the bottom of the pot. Then arrange the tamales vertically in the pot like little soldiers. Steam for 45 mins to an hour (checking on the water level, and adding more when necessary to keep tamales from burning). The finished Tamale should not be soft and gooey, but rather firm and a bit rubbery. Cooked tamales can be frozen for six months and refrigerated for a week.