I want to cook ~200 tamales with friends. I’ve watched a few different approaches online to making tamales, but I got inspired by this specific recipe to do them en masse and plan to follow the process (except I want to do a couple different types): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvxzsw73ddQ
First off, does that recipe/process seem legit? Adding sauce to the masa isn’t something I’ve seen elsewhere but it would make it easy to ID different types if we do it.
I’m also finding mixed answers to the question of when we should freeze them. Is it before or after steaming? General consensus seems to be after steaming to let them cool then wrap them in foil and put the individually wrapped tamal in a freezer bag. Is that correct? I’m finding people online that do it before steaming too.
Any ingredients to avoid like cheeses or mole sauces since I’m freezing?
Sorry for the noob questions, last thing I want is to waste all the food and effort since none of us have experience making them. Thanks in advance!
by nimoto
6 Comments
They taste more fresh if you freeze them before steaming and then steam them at a later time. I’ve had both from my mom and both methods work, but I prefer the taste of a fresh steamed tamal.
Depending on the type of tamal, you add the sauce to the masa or not. Usually its an adobo or mole. Bear in mind that this method kinda dries out the sauce. I’ve seen people online making sauceless tamales only to pour the salsa on top after, but that is really weird as I’ve never seen that in Mexico.
What you could do is make 1 base dough and then use it for all the fillings, usually we use *tamaleras* which is a steamer made specifically for tamales that also include divisions inside so you don’t mix them. If you can get one or make some type of division for your tamales that could work too.
Freezing is better after being cooked, I honestly never seen someone freezing raw tamales, and usually the masa for tortillas doesn’t work well after being frozen, so I doubt tamales could work. Just let them cool and wrap them in plastic, you could also pack them on air tight bags, I’ve done it and they last forever.
I’m the last person to be qualified to be giving advice, but I would recommend doing a small test batch. The first time (and only time so far) I made tamales, I didn’t know if my masa or filling would be any good, so I made a half dozen before committing to dozens that could’ve been bad. Which is probably a good idea for any large batch foods.
My wife and I decided to be the tamale people this Christmas. It gave me tons of respect for the parking lot tamale sellers cause it’s hard. I also watched this video. What we did was a practice round of masa filling and salsa. Once that was done we figured out how much masa filling to use based on a serious eats article, then we used dishers to make sure the scoops of masa and meat were a continuous ratio. The first practice we did not cook long enough or use enough fat. On the large batches fillings were prepped and mixed with salsa then set aside and we made the masa shaped and steamed from there. It took 2 days for 2 people to do 100.
It’s a production and it’s definitely not a build your own pizza night. Your windows will sweat from the steam
Idk about the recipe, but for me tamales are like tacos, you can put everything you want inside of it and it will work, having said that, avoid the tamales get upset.
What is that? Okay when you put too much tamales together they can stop the steam to go up and that can prevent you from getting all of the cooked evenly, so the solution to this can be a pipe (have been using a PVC pipe for years without any trouble) in the middle with holes so the steam can go up and all the tamales will be fine. Another solution is to put some pieces of wood while you put all the tamales in the tamalera* and remove them at the end so the steam has plenty space to go up and make the well. Keep this in mind and get creative que the recipe.
Good luck with the tamales, and show us the final product. Good luck!!!
There many different recipes and methods to make tomales. As every family in every town has there own family recipe. So dont get scared if the recipes are different but choose the one with ingrediants you can souce and seams good. But i would do a small batch test of the recipe before making 200 of them.