i made tamales

welcome everyone today we are going to cook some things i guess we are going to try to know that there is this level of excitement when i have an idea of ​​something i want to try to cook and i am like gathering the ingredients and i am running around town i am researching different recipes and then every time I stand here and I'm ready to cook it I'm like I can't do this I absolutely can't do this I'm looking at all these ingredients that I've never cooked with most of them all the excitement that had previously or come back please maybe at some point potentially at the end of this recipe i will feel that emotion again and i hope i can do it because i really wanted to do my best and make some

tamales

and this is a very pozole-like food which is very special for a lot of people and i don't want to go up and i'm scared i'm going to go up but all i can do is do my best just do some research grab some ingredients and ignite to that flame and here we go so without a bit more we are going to do our best to do it to them we have a lot of work for us here but the pot of gold at the end of this cloudy rainbow of me cooking is potentially a delicious tamale , so join me as we try to make some wonderfully beautiful

tamales

in my kitchen.

I'm so nervous. Take my hand. Please, I'm nervous. Alright. Take a deep breath and let's get started. help me it smells bad ok i did my best to try to put together a general guide on how to make tamales regardless of what you are putting inside obviously most of the recipes i found were pork tamales and most of The recipe focuses on pork and how to prepare and cook it, flavor it and tenderize it, and since we're not making it, it gives us an opportunity to focus on the tamale part, which is very new to me, so I'll first I've never cooked with which I'm excited to try out these corn husks you're going to want to get some dry corn husks and the first thing we're going to do with these beautiful corn husks they smell pretty good too is we're going to put them in a pot of warm water no boiling, not super hot, not cold, just lukewarm and we're going to let them soften a bit while we prepare the rest of the recipe so they're malleable to fold and the filling fits inside and then you know how to fold it later, come on to count these, we have like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, that's enough, that's enough, so I'm going to place them in the pot here and hopefully we can completely submerge them. place the steam rack on top so that it presses down on the shells so they stay submerged and thus can fully soften.

First we are going to prepare the main ingredient, which is the dough, this will be a mix of sand dough. which is a cornmeal and then some cornmeal there are many differences different ways to do this I've seen people grind dry corn kernels I've seen people have a pre

made

one that you can buy at the store I think it's from the same company that makes just the dough, there are many different shapes, etc. I just decided I'm going to use my cornmeal that I've had from my corn tortilla recipes and everything I've

made

and mix it with a little bit of cornmeal, yeah that's right I think and that goes It's going to be kind of a flour base for the masa and the tamales and then we're going to add all the other ingredients that you can customize again however you want.

I've seen people put chopped veggies veggies beans like whole beans inside the mix you can do it either way I'm going to blatantly do the simplest white boy version of this just because I don't want to overwhelm myself and I want to get out of this alive so I'll do a pretty basic version of tamales but I'm going to add a little bit of cheese and I'm going to have a little bit of sauce for that but t The first step is to take our masa harina and a lot of the recipes I've seen didn't give me any measurements you know how much i like that, no i'm talking about we're flying no measuring cups today and then some cornmeal I guess why am I hesitating with up ok no this is good.

I saw recipes that use this so we're going to add a little cornmeal a little more me too if I'm doing something wrong please don't yell. to me, sorry in advance. I'm going to whisk these little dry ingredients together. We're going to mix in maybe like a half teaspoon of baking powder in the spirit of not measuring. We'll just sprinkle it on and a generous bit of salt, you'll be able to flavor this a bit later right before we add this mixture to our corn husks, so don't stumble too much on the salt measurements at first, just add a little little, now what we're going to do is take some of these chicken, not chicken, cubed and we're going to dissolve them. in some boiling water so I'm going to do that and then in a second I'll have some impromptu chicken broth to pour in here so BRB one second I'm going to clap my hands and then I'll be right back with some broth, OK?

I'm back so I melted down these previously solid dollops of coconut oil and plant based butter and what this is going to do is our lard substitute and every recipe I looked up was like you need lard to make Tomales So the coconut oil will provide the texture and consistency of real lard and the butter spread will serve more as a flavoring for the fat that we're going to add and it's important from what I've read that it has enough of the fat in this recipe otherwise it can't get grainy and fall apart and just not taste good so don't skimp on the fat here ok we need to add some fat ok so again no measurements we have broth homemade chicken that's pretty good i'm going to put a nice place here ok i'm going to leave these ice cubes oh it's still piping hot dammit ok we're almost an ice cube the recipe doesn't say anything about a adding a hot liquid and like it messes things up, so I don't want to take any chances.

I'm going to chill this little artisan chicken broth until it tastes like chicken though now we're going to add a little bit of coconut oil leave a little in case you have a little butter and mix this up now a little bit of broth and we . we want a consistency where we can kind of make a mush so it doesn't need to be runny but it can't be too dry either, it should be a little nice The Mashable texture looks like we're going to need all the stock really this the flour of dough is like a tank right now and it soaks up all this holy broth so I'm going to ditch the spatula and get my hands dirty because this is what the recipe says to do. from mashing it all together I think it needs to be wetter I think potentially more oil I really made sure that w Let's not skimp on the oil I don't mind if I do yeah so it's a little too dry.

It doesn't stick anymore so I still think we're a little light on the liquid. I'm just going to add the rest of the broth. you know this is a food i have eaten quite a bit growing up its not like most of my recipes where i never tried it before but tamales are naturally gluten free most of the time so i have enjoyed tamales for a long time. It's just that I've never come close to making my own. Okay, this is more of the consistency we're looking for here. It's like a wet paste. You want it to be sticky. it's what we want yeah from the recipes i saw in the videos i saw people get their hands dirty so we're onto something just make sure your bowl makes a lot of noise you can also do this slap test where you slap the mix and if after pounding and making sure it sticks to your hand then you're all set but if it doesn't stick then the mix has been mashed up enough we should try a punch tests done bad bad dough doesn't stick so yeah so quick i'm going to try why that already tastes great shots to that cabinet stays open the way i like i'm going to check the corn husks i feel like the corn husks need a little more time they are definitely softer but i don't know yes they are as smooth as we want them yet so we have this beautiful mix this is our dough a it tastes phenomenal I don't know what it's supposed to taste like at this stage but I think this is relatively what we want them to be know our finished product or, okay, I'm going to quickly chop up this onion here because I'm going to use a white onion and some refried beans to make a little bean mix that will go really well inside the tamale to add a little bit of a different texture and flavor, so that it is not just a mixture of dough and cheese, we are also thinking that I have a sauce on top, it is not necessary that it has that good finely chopped almost a dice and we are going to put a little oil on it, I also think we will add a little garlic also because no one ever said they didn't like the garlic you put in the recipe unless they were allergic to garlic in which case that's a bad situation that was a bad situation the oil started to shine a little bit so we're going to drain the bean juice and add some of our refried beans in our pan here wait a minute if they're refried beans that means they've been fried twice and we're frying them now so that's our spooky bean it's deep fried which is really good so we're pretty much making the whole can of beans here honestly what are we making?

If you know who's not smart, I should have put the onions first, but that's okay, we'll do it. I'm going to put the onions here. Well, we still have some sizzling oil. Let's let it go. Let it cook. I'm going to let this bean mixture simmer, now it's on a very low setting and what we're going to do now is take our corn husks and we're going to let them air dry. In fact, this is too small a platform, but you have the idea that you will take them out of the water and let them sit to air dry a bit.

Our bean mix looks good and it's done. add some pepper its a very basic side of refried beans that we are going to use for seasoning why did i do that? we are going to reuse our now we are going to pour this water again. I found myself in one of these recipes that I'm so into and I'm trying to make a w rito that I like I can't focus on anything else so if this video blows up I'm sorry it's just me here anyway so so we've got our corn husks here behind us nice and soft they're drying on that paper towel so we're going to have them ready in a bit but it looks like we're there all we have to do now is assemble the tamales and put them on a steam rack that we're going to use, it's like an insert pot that goes inside the larger pot that you can use as a steam rack, so there's already about, I don't know, three inches of water in there , but I feel like it's time, are we ready to do this? are we ready to do it? for you, we're ready, okay, here we go, let's do it, forgive me, everyone who knows how to do this right, I forgive myself for not getting it right, okay, oh, for one, okay, they're not necessarily dry yet, but we're going to do it anyway we're going to take some of the dough and just spread it out you're supposed to use the spatula I think but then you're going to like to fold it I think like a book you just come close close fold the top oh wait that one had no beans on it ok that one will be simple ok I'm not very smart so let's take some beans from our pre-refried bean mix and fold the bottom and top over oh wow that's there too down, you have to ace Secure them when you're folding them because you don't really understand much since this isn't like a stretchy tortilla or anything yeah these corn husks can be a little underdone in terms of softening up they still feel a little stiff in some areas , but they're working, I mean we're doing the work here, I wonder if I like it when I'm doing them, if necessary, I don't know how to say this, what should the bean mix look like? be on the inside or it may be floating on top as I hope I'm not screwing this up oh and I haven't been putting cheese on any of these well they'll all be different we'll start adding cheese to some we won't be reopening those that are ready just a little nice portion of mots and the beans on top fold fold bottom up I really hope I'm not screwing this up so bad we only have a couple more to assemble but I'm going to throw them in the steamer what you're going to do is put them in a steamer pot or on a steam rack recipes vary some say 30 minutes some say an hour so we're going to go somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour and hopefully at the end of all this we'll have some tamales maybe we don't who knows you did the best we could , well, here we have six, okay, apparently okay, the Tomales are all in one piece, they are all piping hot.

I don't know. steaming hot tamales isn't burning my hand at all as you can tell by my completely straight and untouched face that doesn't let me faze but I think we should try opening one whatdo you think? I don't have plates ok ok well here we go this is uh this is our test tamale this is our test macho ok as far as I can tell it looks like it's the right consistency. I cooked it for about 40 minutes. That is really very good. I thought it would be bad. this above i can't believe how good it is so this is just the simple recipe it was also a really humble recipe even though i never cooked tamales before i looked at it like i could do that.

I know why I found it easy but it's not, this is not an easy recipe at all. s is just a simple tomalak target out of amazing but the real guy will be the bean and cheese one so let's try that one this one only has beans I think it's ok that one is really good the one with beans just adds so much so i can just imagine if i made a meat substitute its like the tamale tastes really good on its own if you want you know the basic simple flavors i do love it you could eat them plain all day but if your thirst for spices or different flavors or textures is driving you crazy you can put vegetables you can put whatever you want inside the tamale and add to it I'm pretty sure because the beans just made it so much better that's bomb I gotta try one with cheese, so good, you know what I think?

We have to get Jenna here. -hmm refried beans I fried them and they were already refried that ime has is just the mixture of dough with a little cheese these these have cheese these don't Oh, you travel with cheese that's so good you could do it but I couldn't because this was a process very overwhelming and i needed to just do a little self care and not overwhelm myself more take care of myself more you like it so good they are pretty good i am very happy with it i mean i have really been impressed this is probably the most common mexican food i have ever eaten in my life because they are naturally gluten free and they are really good as pearls I think they came out better than I thought but I'm still a little disappointed in myself I was overwhelmed with this one this one really got me because I didn't want to fail in making the actual food of the tamale taste held together with the correct consistency.

I got really hooked on that and it was a really difficult process I mean I'm honored by this kind of beating me up a bit at least we have a tasty treat at the end and even if it doesn't have the sauce and it's not as traditional or accurate as could have been i really tried so i hope you enjoyed watching me and be nice to me in the comments ok i know i probably did everything wrong but we are here doing our best and next time there will be a next time because as the plant based meat substitute movement goes on there are so many amazing new meat substitutes out there and this with some meat substitute is going to be really good especially if it had some good sauce on top next time i promise i will I'll hand it over to you but for now we're just stuck with some simple bean and cheese tamales which don't piss me off these are really good and I made tamales that's exciting yeah wait yeah it is keep it up s going good i promise it tastes good here look it tastes good here have a bite do that cheesy well there you go have a bite here you go okay you know how satisfying not all home runs can be this was not necessarily. a touch but it was like it was like an infield base may be a mistake we'll accept that thanks for looking I hope you enjoyed if you made tamales together with me I'd love to see you tweet me and I'll see you guys next week hopefully with a less stressful recipe at the one that can thrive and excel maybe a little more I think this week the recipe did me good I don't think I made it to the recipe sometimes you make it to them sometimes they make it okay I'm done, I'm done with it all , thanks for watching hello again as soon as i finished filming this episode i was thinking to myself how i really did a disservice by not trying to make a sauce or have a sauce with it because i know tamales almost always have sauce in it is what first Jenna asked and I just couldn't live with myself not making a sauce or not having a sauce for this Tomales recipe I made so I used the chiles de árbol I had and made an improvised version. red tamale red sauce isada and I think it's pretty good turned out to be exactly how I wanted it's spicy and good it bites into the tamales you wait you know like a tangy flavor to go with the rich almost buttery flavor of the tamale and we didn't have that so It all felt really sketchy and then I stopped filming and all I could think about was the damn sauce that's literally you want to try the Red it's spicy really super basic super basic tamale sauce but at least we're done You like it, Jenna approved.

I had to go back and do it.