TexMex Style Tamale Recipe

[Saviolo]

So, my hubby (the chef!) comes from Texas, and this is the sort of restaurant-style tamales that he would get growing up in the Houston area. There are a lot of Latin American and Caribbean cultures that do a version of tamales, but these are going to be very similar to the type that were widely available around the holidays in Texas. It can be a bit of a cottage industry, where you can buy a bunch of tamales for the holidays from your co-worker, made by their family.

The filling we use for this is our chili, which uses big chunks of beef chuck. Because the chili cooks for so long, the beef is extremely tender and shreds easily to use as the filling. Tamales can also be stuffed with chilis, cheese, or vegetables, whatever you'd like. For the masa, we used bacon grease (because we had some on hand and it adds that nice bacony flavour), but you can also use lard or shortening to make the masa dough to wrap the filling in.

[Kali]

1. OMG!

I never thought of using bacon grease for tamales! I use lard. same deal with the cottage industry thing around here, and they get you in the parking lots too. this year we got a good order in for green corn tamales from one of my sons friend's family. home grown corn and green chiles. I still have 3 dozen in the freezer. planning to make some red chile beef in the next week or so.

now to watch your video.

[Saviolo]

3. If you've got it on hand, bacon grease works great!

Gives everything that nice aroma of bacon, and works just as well as lard. We would typically use lard, but nice to have options.

[Kali]

5. I use bacon greas a lot, but never thought of using for tamales

sounds really good!

[Kittycow]

2. I'm positively swooning!

I'm starving right now so watching this is a delicious torture

[Saviolo]

4. Don't watch food videos when you're hungry!

You'll just hurt yourself! XD