14.3.10

Experimental Cooking - Pork Tamales

This week's Can you make it/is it worth it challenge:  Pork Tamales



I frankensteined together a couple of recipes because I also wanted to try making my own mole sauce.  You can use really cheap cuts like neck, bones and all.  Talk to your butcher or stop in at a local carniceria. Boiling the bones adds flavor to your stock, which will make the masa dough more flavorful.

1. I boiled 2 pounds of cheap pork with an onion, and orange, 2 bay leaves and 3 garlic cloves for about 2 hours, until the pork was fork tender.
2. I shredded the meat with two forks, and strained the solids from the broth.
3. I made one batch of mole as seen here, tossed it on the shredded pork.
4. We used this recipe for the masa, using the pork broth in place of the chicken broth.  2 lbs of pork uses up about a double recipe of the masa recipe so we did supplement with some chicken broth for the second batch when we ran out of pork broth.  They were both delicious.

Notes for next time:

The flavor was awesome.  I'd do it the same next time.  I was a bit worried that the meat/mole needed more salt, but the amount of salt in the masa dough made balanced the flavors really well.

From start to finish, this was a 6 hour cook-a-thon (granted most of it involved leaving a pot set to a low boil and doing something else for a bit).  The amount of time you spend making these means it is worth doing in large quantities and freezing.  We easily made enough for 5 dinners for 2.

The mole recipe I used was quite spicy (perfect for Mr C and I), if you like it on the mild side I'd use 1/2 a can of diced chilis.

We used 1/2 a bag of corn husks for this batch.  No need to soak the whole bunch.  Also, the corn husks at my supermarket are kept in the produce section under the apples.  I can't tell you how many other places I looked before giving up and stumbling upon them as I went to get some apples to use with the pork.

Also, use the big corn husks.  Save the little ones for making dessert tamales like pineapple flavored ones.

Summary:  Can you make tamales at home?  Absolutely!  The main ingredient was patience, and even two people who have never seen a tamale made figured it out really quickly.  Is it worth it?  Yes!  I'll do this again for sure!