Tamales - Hot Tamales

[Farmfresh]

You all are talking Hot Tamales (what I grew up calling them) So here is a thread for YOUR recipes.

Part of my hometown history is a DIVE called Jim's Tamales. My mother was addicted to them. I have always been take it or leave it on the tamale train, but everyone who ever liked a Tamale LOVED Jim's.



Jim Van Zandt III took over the family business from his Grandfather. “Jim Shepard came to Kansas City in the 1920s from Springfield with a tamale recipe and started selling them from a white cart,” an article by the Kansas City Pitch news paper declares, “By the 1940s, he had fifteen or twenty guys out selling the tamales for him, all with carts outfitted with a steamer, a bell and a lantern. The lantern was because these guys would be out all night. One customer of mine remembers coming out of a bar at Ninth and Walnut one night, right after World War II, and buying some hot tamales to eat on his way home. The cart business vanished two decades ago “along with the milkman, the vegetable huckster and the ice man, but the members of the Van Zant family still make and sell tamales out of their factory in Independence" ... At least until Jim got cancer and died. His recipe evidently died with him, or is still a secret in the family. My personal connection to the Tamale king was that his grandson, a really sweet kid, was one of my students. He would talk about his grandpa Jim with the reverence given a king... and I guess that is what he was. The King of Tamales.

But the restaurant was a real and for true DIVE. The kind of place with greasy counters and wobbly tables where you really hoped you wouldn't get sick from, but as many times as I was fed food from there as a kid it was never an issue. Personally my favorite thing was a tenderloin and some onion rings, but my mom went only ever for the tamales. Evidently the kind he made were different from the typical Mexican ones in corn husks. They were skinney, heavy on the meat and wrapped in parchment paper. Here is a video showing Jim's Tamales restaurant. The video is as bad as the restaurant was, but you don't become a city wide tradition and last for nearly 80 years without making a darned tasty tamale.



Not Jim's recipe, but similar:
New Orleans-Style Hot Tamales Recipe

INGREDIENTS

For the Tamales

3 lbs of ground beef (ground chuck)
4 medium sweet yellow onions, quartered
3 teaspoons granulated garlic
3 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
4 teaspoons coarse-ground kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ cup chili powder
1 8oz can tomato sauce (or can of crushed tomatoes)
½ cup water
1½ cups of yellow cornmeal
100 tamale papers

For the Sauce

1 8oz can of tomato sauce (or can of crushed tomatoes)
1 teaspoon cumin
¼ cup chili powder
Salt to taste
Freshly cracked black pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

For the Sauce

Combine all the ingredients in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add seasonings to taste.
Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and set aside.

For the Tamales

Put the onions, the seasonings, the tomato sauce, and ½ cup of water in a food processor. Process until the onions are finely chopped.
Place the ground beef in a large glass mixing bowl and pour the seasoned tomato and spice mixture over the meat. Using your hands, mix well.
Place the tamales papers, one at a time and one on top of the other, into a large bowl of water. This step might sound tedious, but it is necessary to prevent the papers from sticking to each other and to ensure that each paper will be completely saturated.
Place cornmeal in a shallow dish and set aside.
Working with about 1 tablespoon of meat at a time, roll it out with your hands into an oblong (cylindrical) shape, then roll in the cornmeal to lightly coat. Wrap each one in a tamale paper, folding over the open ends to completely close in the beef. Repeat this step until all the tamale mixture is gone.
In a large dutch oven or roasting pan, stack the tamales in layers. Each layers should be perpendicular to the layer below it.
Cover the tamales with water, then add the seasoned tomato sauce. Cover and simmer for 2 hours. Check occasionally, and add water as necessary to keep the tamales covered.

NOTES This recipe yields about 90 to 100 hot tamales.

[Old Fashioned]

Hmmmmm, thanks for posting a thread on this......but I take it you haven't made them? That method does sound alot easier, using ground burger and just rolling in cornmeal, but I'm not sure that's what I was looking for, but I will keep it in mind in case the other way doesn't work out.

I watched more of Views on the Road and it was a long video, more because of them taking too much time showing about rolling the tamales and her mother showed up to help. So alot of blabber that didn't need to be. Her recipe and instructions are in the description...




I also checked my plan B for Mexican recipes...Simply Mama Cooks, this she made pork tamales, but the recipe & process seems similar enough to beef...just change out the meat.




Then I went to plan C for many recipes.....good old Cowboy Kent Rollins, even #1 says he likes him.





One thing I discovered after watching them all.......their processes are just about the same. Just some of the ingredients are different, and I think the dancing cowboy lost my vote on this one, cause he used oil to mix his masa harina with, instead of lard. I'm thinking Simply Mama Cooks might just be the one I go for.

[patriceinil]

I absolutely LOVE Tom Tom brand tamales and occasionally splurge on them, they are $1 each at the grocery store. Sometimes you can find them in a fast food place.

Here’s the link to them: https://g.co/kgs/Bv8qUm

I want to try making my own just to see how they turn out.

I used to go to a place called Juniors Hotdogs that served Tom Tom tamales served on a bed of Fritos then covered with their chili and topped with shredded cheese, diced onions and sliced jalapeños.

Here’s a recipe similar to the one FF shared that is for a Chicago style tamale.
https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food ... les-358315

"As tamales spread across Texas and the rest of the South, they underwent some changes. Easy-to-find cornmeal replaced the Mexican lime-slaked masa and paper squares were often used to roll up the tamales instead of the traditional corn shucks. Anglo tamale-eaters preferred beef to the traditional pork, so beef tamales became common.
Ingredients
3 pounds ground beef
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
1/4 cup chili powder
4 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
Two 8-ounce cans tomato sauce
36 pieces parchment or wax paper cut into 5-inch squares
For dredging:
4 cups yellow cornmeal mixed with 2 teaspoons salt
Step 1

Combine the ground beef, seasonings, yellow cornmeal, and tomato sauce in a large bowl and mix well. Make 36 balls of approximately 2 tablespoons of the mixture, or 1 1/2 ounces per ball. Roll each ball into a cigar shape about 5 inches long. Fill a 9 by 12-inch casserole or cake pan with the dredging mixture. Dredge the individual meat "cigars" in the cornmeal until well coated. Place each cornmeal-coated "cigar" in a piece of paper and roll up the paper around the filling. In a large steamer pot, lay two layers of tamales and steam for 1 hour, covered. Serve hot.
Variation - Mississippi Corn Bread Tamales:
Step 2

Add 1/2 cup water and a teaspoon of salt to 10 cups corn bread crumbs and work into a paste. Cover the meat "cigars" with the paste individually instead of dredging. Proceed as directed"

From The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos © 2004 by Robb Walsh. Reprinted with permission from Ten Speed Press. "

[Old Fashioned]

I finally made them today using Simply Mama Cooks recipe & method. UGH, it was ALOT of work and took me all day, even with the meat already cooked and was a real PITA trying to wrap them little buggers. I'm pretty sure I didn't knead the masa enough as part of the problem. Then during one of the many breaks I took....I skipped thru some of the cowboy video and seen he keeps a cup of water handy to dip his spoon in, to help spread the masa better. I kept adding water to the batter a little at a time and what would help with a couple of tamales, but it was acting like it would dry up, so I kept adding a bit of water for every couple of tamales. I made 2 dozen and called it a day even though I still had plenty of masa, meat & husks. Probably enough to make another 2 dozen. I put the extras in the fridge.

Results??? Well both boys liked them really well. In fact, #3 came back out for seconds. He never does that. I thought they were pretty good too, but could have used a bit more seasoning like maybe some cumin and/or oregano or something. Not much, just a bit for more flavor. I told the boys if I made them again, I'd do it as a casserole with a layer of masa, layer of meat and topped with a layer of masa and bake it. Maybe with a pan of water under it and covered with husks to try to keep it moist. And actually I may do that with the leftover stuff in a couple of days.

I also ran across this video of "Rachel cooks with love" where she does add other seasonings. But she adds 2 1/4 cups of rendered pork fat that's almost liquid & pourable, instead of 1 cup of lard or shortening as the others use. Hers are probably better, but I didn't see her until afterward and don't have the pork fat. But I did discover a trick to know when the masa is kneaded enough....she drops a pinch in a cup of water and when it floats at the top it's ready for the tamales. If it sinks, you still need to work it more.

[Farmfresh]

Glad that everyone enjoyed your efforts! As for flavor without added heat, I am a sworn believer in Spanish Gardens taco spice.



https://spanish-gardens-foods.myshopify ... pose-spice

This stuff is made with smoked dried peppers and spices and ... with a few diced onions is all you ever need for perfect every time. My family loves this stuff.

[patriceinil]

I’m glad everyone liked the tamales. I haven’t had a chance to try making them yet but I’ll have to remember the trick with the water to make sure the mass is worked enough.

[Old Fashioned]

Farm.....I don't think I've ever seen it before, but then I haven't looked for it either. I'll keep my eye out for it next time at the store. Thanks


Patrice......if you do make them, be forewarned........it's alot of work and as I said, took me all day with lots of breaks in between. By the time I gave up, I'd only made about half the tamales I had the stuff for. I'm telling ya, they make it look easy, but it was kicking my butt. Much of my problem was the husks either tearing or being hard wrinkled that wouldn't soften up enough to lay out well enough, even after putting in the boiling water & letting them sit for hours. Then trying to spread the masa evenly and it would pull up or get caught in the grooves of the husks so some spots were bare and others were thick.....and yes I did it on the so called 'smooth' side of the husks that most of them weren't all that smooth.

[patriceinil]

Thanks for the warning OF. I picked up several cans of Hormel tamales today when I shopped. They are decent tasting and shelf stable so I didn’t mind getting some for my pantry.

[Old Fashioned]

On that tamale pie casserole........it was pretty good too. I had alot more of the masa leftover than the meat filling, so I used a loaf pan. Layered the masa on the bottom, meat filling in the middle and more masa on top. Then rinsed some of the corn husks in hot water for a bit and put them wet over the top, then foil to cover and baked @ 350 for about an hour. About the 45 minute mark I took the corn husks off cause it looked too moist and just let it finish.

[Farmfresh]

That sounds a LOT easier for nearly the same results.