for thanksgiving my tia liz had the awesome idea of us girls (daddy had to work this thanksgiving) making homemade tamales! now this is something none of us has ever ever EVER done before... we were just going to wing it! so last night momo & mommy started boiling 9lbs of pork, soaking the cornhusks, peeling garlic, deseeding peppers, boiling peppers with tomatoes to make salsa & getting everything out & ready for our big adventure.
then this morning it was time to make the dough. we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into it was that a lot of messy work... there was masa & lard everywhere! it took all hands on deck to work that dough, it took us over an hour to get it just right & we were up to our elbows in it. just for something a little extra, momo put a little bit of bacon grease & blended peppers in the dough for extra love.
after the dough/masa was done we let it sit then tia liz & momo started chopping, seasoning & stir-frying the pork.
then it was time to start spreading our dough/masa on the softened corn husk evenly. evenly being the key word, it took us a little practice to get it just right.
then we spooned a small amount of pork on one side... to much & the tamale would be to hard to roll. then we carefully rolled up the husk so that the masa completely surrounds the filling & the tamale stays intact. once i got the hang of it i tamale rolling machine, i know rolled more than 60 tamales. after they're rolled you stand them in a steamer tee-pee like style & let them steam for about 30 mins.
after we made our first 12 we decided we had to taste them before we made anymore to make sure everything was tasting the way it was supposed to. remember we've never done this before & we weren't following a recipe... so we had to have a taste test. in one word we had... SUCCESS!!! we couldn't believe how delicious they were & were upset that we only made 12 to try because that was not near enough to share between us fairly! we were devouring them, they were the most amazing tamales i've ever had!!! you know they're good because livi is not a corn fan at all & she ate more than half of her tamale!
so after we knew how awesome they were it was back to work to finish so we could have more of this yumminess!
we made 116 tamales today & it was definitely a thanksgiving we'll never forget! it was by far the funnest, messiest & hardest day we've ever spent making something, but we loved it & can't wait to do it again. i've already ate 5 tamales so we'll have to be making them sooner than later... they are so mmm, mmm, good!!! i have to say after all that i'm so glad i wasn't part of the clean up crew... talk about one giant mess, totally worth it though. so now we very full bellies & happy hearts! we hope you had a happy thanksgiving too!
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