Taco, what am I making?

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jeffie7

Wrong Whole!
VIP
I'm working on a recipe for HOK and figured I'd shoot to shots of it while its in the works to see if you can figure out what it is.

anyone else can take guesses at it.

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Here's a hint, in the pot (2nd picture) there is 3 items. Water, salt and chicken.
 
The last batch was done around 3am.

I'm making food for a get together tomorrow. Plus its not uncommon for me to be cooking really late, cooking isnt always about eating but rather working on making something better and testing out new ideas.
 
The last batch was done around 3am.

I'm making food for a get together tomorrow. Plus its not uncommon for me to be cooking really late, cooking isnt always about eating but rather working on making something better and testing out new ideas.

I like the way you think. :thumbsup:
 
do you realize what my late night meals end up being? Mini pizza's for 3 minutes, nuked. always hits the spot for me.

not three batches of water, salt and chicken...

what are you making anyways? soup?
 
no idiot. tAmales!!!!

ohh you sir have got more of my rep.....chicken is good but pork with red peppers mixed in is better? def. keep this updated. if i ever catch my mom making it i'll take pics for you to show the way my mom makes them

ohh and have fun spreading them on the corn leaves!!!
 
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do you realize what my late night meals end up being? Mini pizza's for 3 minutes, nuked. always hits the spot for me.

not three batches of water, salt and chicken...

what are you making anyways? soup?

he's making one of the greates food known to mexican peeps like myself. tamales is family thing that usually end up with everyone helping out,at least the spreading of the corn mix on the corn leaf.:D It takes alot of time and preperation but once comletely finished it can feed up to 3 families. when my mom makes them it takes 2 days,generally mom and dad both cook it. when finished my mom seperates them in to dozens. she gives one to me,some to both of her sisters' family and still has about 3 more dozens in the freezer.

so about 8 dozens of tamales. ok maybe 3 mexican famiies :ph34r:

they are even better when you reheat them. Jeffie: make sure when you reheat them you lay them on a hot flat pan on top of the stove. once one side is toasty and and the leaf is slightly burned fip it over. This goes very well early in the morning with coffee or in the evening sitting around with family....drinking coffee.
 
I'm working on a recipe for HOK and figured I'd shoot to shots of it while its in the works to see if you can figure out what it is.

anyone else can take guesses at it.

111.jpg

112.jpg


Here's a hint, in the pot (2nd picture) there is 3 items. Water, salt and chicken.

my mom uses a pot 4 times the size and uses the whole dining table to make the dough...by hand.

its the reason why we dont make them to often
 
There was a woman in my town who used to sell tamales, but they were made with smoked brisket.. They were awesome. I like the pork/pepper ones, too. And I'm not a big fan of pork.
 
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Hey Taco--I get the hint that you like coffee with your tamales. I could be wrong though.

lately i have been drinking it every time i go to my parents, and yes the tamales with coffee in the morning is great. they warm you up in the winter season...
 
holy shit taco dont you mean banana leaves? lol i guess colombians do it a bit different...hehe and jeffie dude your in luck... i made a vid of the family making tamales during christmas.
 
no idiot. tAmales!!!!

ohh you sir have got more of my rep.....chicken is good but pork with red peppers mixed in is better? def. keep this updated. if i ever catch my mom making it i'll take pics for you to show the way my mom makes them

ohh and have fun spreading them on the corn leaves!!!

you knew what i meant..
:)
 
ding ding ding!!!!

tAmale yes gringos say tOmales but it's really TA-males.

Here's the issue with doing tamales, no matter what I do, I will ALWAYS be wrong, everyone makes them different and depending on whos mother made them or what city they came from they can vary from apples, potatoes, pork, beef, fish... you name it. Pretty much anything can go into them. So my goal? to make one DAMN GOOD basic tamale.

Most of my research for tamales is eating as many as I can, thankfully I live in a pretty heavy Hispanic area and there's a lot of great food joints, also I work with Hispanics and they bring me home made tamales whenever they make them. IMO the key to making a great tamale, is texture! some tamales are very grainy, others can be dry, but a good tamale is so damn light, fluffy, and smooth. Only issue I'm having is with out grinding up my own maíz, using only maseca "harina de maiz" I'm not getting as much of a corn flavor as I'd like, I have the txture down to a T.

I'm all about grinding maiz but a lot of people wont take the extra steps to do it, so I'm thinking about trying canned corn, blinding it up into a very smooth paste and adding that to the harina then lowering the water content. As of right now the tamales taste better then most I've had local, but it's still lacking that corn kick some of the better ones I've had have had.

Taco ask yoru mom a good way of adding more maiz flavor with out using corn, I'm thinking that a small can of canned corn ground up might be the ticket but until I try it, I wont know. Again I want to stick with maseca since its easily found in most stores.

Notice that in my mixing bowl it looks like cake icing, I started out by beating the lard till it was very fluffy then added 1 spoon at a time of maseca y aqua, the batter ends up being suppppper fluffly. I also let the masa rest so all the corn is able to do its thing and become soft as can be.

I also like using parchment paper VS dried corn husk/banana leaves, when I do the recipe I'll use both for the sake of the recipe but I find life sooooo much easier using the paper and I can't find THAT much of a difference in flavor, I also think the paper gives for a slightly wetter feel "in a good way"
 
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you need to see the video when i put it on the tube... it will likely answer at least one question for ya dude. on a totally different note, i've just checked out your site.. is that game still under development? have you seen my drawings by chance? they are mostly cars but my most recent one is pretty sweet. i'll post it up later.. or tomorrow. i might make a thread for my art now that i think about it.
 
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post it up.

Thankfully I'm able to get tamales from people who speak zero English, again they're good, made at home with their whole family, I feel that so far I'm on par with theirs if not better on the texture side of things, but there's this one restaurant in town that makes tamales so rich in corn flavor and still so so smooth, I'm a pretty big food snob, I eat ANYTHING from pigs blood, to chicken feet, to balut and durian. you name it I'm game. so when it comes to things like tamales I'm pretty damn picky with them in what makes go from good to great on my food rating scale. hopefully that video will open up my eyes to something new.

If anyone in your family is from El Salvador, have them hook me up with a receta de pupusas revueltas, that's the next Hispanic item I want to tackle.
 
Yeah, the best tamales come from the old mexican women that drive around in beat ass mini vans selling them by the dozen. When they know just enough english to say "six dolla.. dozen".. You know you're in for a treat. The older the woman, the better.
 
When they know just enough english to say "six dolla".. You know you're in for a treat. The older the woman, the better.

Does your wife know about you and your old woman fetish? At least you're not injen looking for young boys.
 
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