Have some more
No gracias
I asked if you would like more tamales
Si ?
*In classic grandma voice* That's what I thought you said!
Hey, what's up guys welcome back to Binging With Babish where this week
We're taking a look at the tamales from Coco.
Once you've got a solid 12 hours set aside to construct your tamales,
we need to start by soaking the corn husks.
We want to soak these in room-temperature water for at least 3 hours, if not overnight. *Classic Andrew*
Just separate the husks a little bit and place them in a large pot. Make sure that they... You know that they...
fit. Uh-oh, time to break out the big guns, or pots.
Big pots. While those guys are soaking we can get started on some of our fillings
I apologize for dressing down
but this was late the night before and that's actually one of the beauties of this recipes that you can
start a day, two days before and stop at virtually any point and pick it up the next day.
You might recognize what I'm doing here
I'm making a pretty basic chili paste out of a couple different kinds of dried chilies in this case guajillo and pasilla chilies
and I'm also going to add a few cloves of garlic, a few quartered tomatillos, a good squeeze of lime, a good squeeze of
orange juice a couple heaping teaspoons of cumin, preferably freshly toasted and ground in a spice grinder, but it's late
and I'm not trying to wake up Rasheed. A good pinch of Mexican oregano,
some salt,
freshly ground pepper, and blitz into a smooth paste.
Pretty close to what we use in our Al Pastor pork. Open this guy up taking the beautiful smells and
set aside to cool completely while we deal with our pork.
We're gonna go with a small pork shoulder for this recipe. Make sure that you are working with
appetizing pork. (Very important) clean the meat from the bone, cut off the skin and cut into
about two inch cubes
Which we're then going to place in a large
Ziploc bag and cover in our marinade. Give it a little massage and fridge this for at least 3 hours.
Or you could come to the shocking realization that you could just let the pork marinate in your cooking vessel so I'm going to place *OH NO *
This in a foil lined casserole that I'm going to cover and fridge for at least three hours or in my case
overnight. The next day, and I'm all gussied up for dinner
And I'm gonna get started on making our tamale dough I am weighing out 560 grams of masa harina
which is a kind of instant corn flour and adding to it?
700 milliliters of very hot water giving it a good mix with a wooden spoon until a crumbly
kind of dough forms set aside and let it rest for 15
minutes while we start working with our lard a lot of people freaked out at the idea of lard
But it's actually not that bad for you, and it's what they use in OG legit shit tamales.
And I'd imagine that's what the abuela in Coco is making so we are whipping
375 grams of lard for two minutes in a stand mixer until it is light and fluffy at which point we're going to add a
half teaspoon of kosher salt and a teaspoon and a half of baking powder mixing it combined before slowly adding our soaked
masa. Add maybe a third of it at a time beating and scraping down the sides of the bowl before adding the rest.
Beating again until a cohesive mass forms into which we are going to slowly stream one cup of
warm chicken stock beating one more time to combine thoroughly and create our dough now.
This is a much thicker fluffier dough than most tamale dough's but they say if you
Drop a piece in cold water and if it floats you're good to go. *:D*
And I think that all the air that we beat in there is going to make for a lighter less dense tamale. Anyway speaking of
which, it's time to talk fillings.
We braised our pork for three hours at 275 degrees Fahrenheit, shredded it and added back a little bit of the marinade.
I'm also gonna do some roasted poblano and cheese tamales.
I roasted some
poblanos straight off the flame on my stovetop,
wrapping the foil let it steam and soften up before we peel them. Now at long last its tamale time.
We're gonna start by peeling off the carbonized exterior of our poblano peppers and cutting them into strips.
I could just eat a giant bowl of these alone, but we're gonna add some cheese. Oaxaca cheese,
which is kind of like a Mexican
mozzarella. We're going to tear the cheese into similarly sized pieces and start spackling our corn husks with tamale dough just spread a nice
relatively thin even layer over the top half of the corn husk leaving a two inch border on each side stuff with your fillings and
roll
together so that the two sides of the tamale dough meet in the middle fold up the tapered end of the corn husk and using
two strips of corn husks that we're going to tie together in the center
we're going to make a little tie for tamales security snip the long strands for a prettier presentation.
And look at that perfect little package it takes a bit of practice
But you find yourself getting into a rythm
and it becomes second nature after your fourth or fifth try.
Repeat with some of the pork and place them all standing up in the steam basket of a large pot cover the tops of the
tamales with a couple straight corn husks.
This is going to help concentrate the heat in the steamer fill with a inch or two of water
Cover and steam for about 90 minutes if you find that the interior of your tamales are sticking to the corn husks.
Just steam them for another 15 minutes stack them up on a large plate, so they stay warm
but let them rest for 30 minutes before digging in. This is gonna help them firm up a little bit and now a solid 8
hours of work later, it's time to finally dig in I'm gonna have one of each. We've got the Oaxaca
and cheese and pork stuffed tamales
but you could really put anything you want in here anything you would put in a taco I bet would work in here.
I'm gonna serve them with a slightly spicy, sharp, acidic, salsa verde.
You can check out my I Love You Man tacos episode for how to make that and
guess what guys, we've got another clean plate award winner. *Yay*. These things can be prepped in advance.
They freeze great after you cook them and they're perfect for your Oscar viewing party, that is if you don't eat them all yourself.