Tamales (WIP/Phase I)

This breaks out in 6 very distinct phases.

  1. Meat preparation
  2. Chile preparation
  3. Husk preparation
  4. Masa preparation
  5. Production
  6. Cooking

Brisket:

Ingredients:

  1. 4 heads of garlic
  2. Large crab pot
  3. 22 lbs of Brisket w fat remaining
  4. Ladle of salt

Brisket Prep:

  1. Cut the brisket into baseball size chunks
  2. Add brisket and garlic to crab pot in garage or outside
  3. Add cold water to the crab pot to 3/4 full
  4. Bring to a boil and add salt
  5. Once boiling, skim the yukkiness repeatedly as it comes to the surface, this will go on for 10-15 minutes until the foam becomes less murky
  6. Boil on high for 15 minutes
  7. Reduce heat and boil for another hour and 45
  8. Take out of water and shred by hand while still hot (forks)
  9. Set aside

Chile prep:

Ingredients

  1. 1 lb new mexico dried chile peppers
  2. 20% of broth from the brisket (u will use the other 80% for the masa)
  3. Lard
  4. Flour

Process (epic)

  1. While someone is hand shredding the beef, clean the chile peppers by rinsing and taking the tops off. Keep the seeds etc inside.
  2. Remove about 80% of the broth from the large crab pot.
  3. Bring broth in crab pot to a boil again (it was off)
  4. Once broth is boiling, stir all of the whole cleaned chile’s into the crab pot broth.
  5. Cover
  6. Boil on high covered for 5+ minutes
  7. Turn off and let sit in covered hot crab pot for 15 minutes
  8. Ladle the cooked chili out into a separate large pot.
  9. Using a blender, blend the chile and some of the broth to the consistency of canned tomato sauce. Blend it all and set aside.
  10. Now to fry the chile sauce. Put a large ladle of lard in a very large pan, (we used electric roaster oven) add a half ladle of flour… yeah are you fukin kidding me. It keeps getting better.
  11. Separately heat the spicy broth (see pic for amt)
  12. Once the lard and flour are combined and hot, add chile sauce and fry. (we are frying the chile sauce so that it binds better with the brisket)
  13. Add the spicy broth into the chile sauce you are frying to make it into a consistency between whole milk and half n half.
  14. At ideal consistency, bring to a slight simmer and start to add the brisket. Add broth and chile as necessary based on volume so that its all coated perfectly.
  15. Simmer for a while to bring the flavors into the meat, 10-15 while stirring
  16. Side note: fresh chile doesnt make your tamales (or anything) too red
  17. Set aside overnight for tomorrow we make the tamales.

Prepping the husks:

Choose high quality husks that are not too dry.

  1. Separate the larger usable husks from the chaffe.
  2. Clean the husks and separate into piles. Bad, good small and good large. Good large is what you want to use. The good small pile is for doubling up for a single tamale.
  3. Soak the husks for 20-30 minutes in warm or hot water. This softens them
  4. Drip dry them, they will not be totally dry.. on purpose.

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