How to make tamales | Chicken Tamales Recipe

[Music] with the weather being a lot cooler I think this is the perfect time to make tamales chicken tamales are one of my favorites and I think they make the perfect gift for the holidays well at least in my family to get started I will be using 1 tbsp of chicken bouillon powder or you could use salt to taste I'm also going to be using 2 teaspoons of garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin 1 teaspoon of black pepper 1 bay leaf 2 teaspoons of onion powder 1 medium onion chopped and 3 to 5 cloves of garlic I'm using my 4 and 1/2 quart crock pot and I'm going to place my chopped and sliced onions into the bottom then I am going to add around three and a half to four pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs next I'm going to add all of my seasonings now I'm going to cover with a lid set my slow cooker to high and cook it for four hours and I will probably give things a stir at the halfway point so now I'm going to prepare my corn husks here I purchased a ready-to-use batch of corn husks it makes around ten dozen I'm not going to make ten dozen Tomatis today but I always like to pre wash them because I find uninvited guests and I will give a disclaimer there's nothing against this brand of corn husk because I use whatever's available to me in my stores and each time I've used different brands I still pre rinse them because of this reason so I suggest you separate your corn husks and give them a good rinse I'm going to rinse them twice then they'll be ready to soak in hot water now typically I would just rinse them a couple of times than fill my sink with hot water and allow the corn husks to soak for several hours in the sink at least one hour soaking but today I need my sink so I'm actually going to rinse these twice and place them in a pot on the stove so what I'm going to do is place all of my cleaned corn husks in this pot and I'm going to bring it up to a boil and once it's up to a boil I'm going to submerge it with something heavy on top cover it with a lid and set it aside until I need it and ultimately you want the corn husk to be soft and pliable and able to fold it so if it takes longer than an hour so be it my suggestion would probably be around three hours and that's just what I'm going to do so if you're preparing to make them always probably prep your corn husks first so you know by the time you need them they are soft and pliable so now that I've covered it with a lid I'm going to set my corn husks aside to the backburner and move on to making my chili puree today I will be using a one and a half ounce bag of guajillo Chile's that is roughly 5 guajillo Chile's I've removed all the seeds and veins and cleaned out the Chile's I also gave them a rinse because some of them had dirt near the stem area so you might want to look out for that so now what I'm going to do is submerge them in water and bring the water to boil I am going to allow them to boil for around five minutes then I will remove them from the heat and allow them to soak for at least 20 minutes they will probably soak longer until I need them and I just want to make sure that they are soft and pliable so that I can blend them up into a puree now that my Chile's have been soaking and are pliable I am now going to blend them I'm going to place them into the blender and then I'm going to add a third cup of water so that they can blend and puree I am now going to pour my puree through a sieve and this will help me remove any chilli flakes that did not get pureed you don't have to do this this is optional it's just something I like to do and to help sieve all of my puree I am going to be adding 1/3 cup of water and I'm going to swish it around in the blender and pour it through the sieve and then start pushing out the puree to get rid of any chili that did not get blended now that my puree is done I'm going to set it aside until I need it okay so my chicken thighs are done I wanted to show you how tender and soft they became cooking in a slow cooker they're falling apart so what I'm going to do is just remove all of my chicken thighs from the crock-pot and then I am going to sieve any drippings and juices left in the crock pot and that will go into my masa anything left in the sieve as far as onions garlic or just anything that didn't go through the sieve and to the liquid will go back into my chicken and I will work that in when it shreds so after saving all of my drippings I am left with around twelve ounces of liquid and this is perfect flavoring for my masa now I'm going to prepare my meat filling I've chopped up all of my chicken thighs and now I'm just going to add the chili puree it's up to you how much you want to add I probably added around a 1/2 cup to the to the chicken and with my hands I'm just going to mix it and shred it into a fine shred [Music] now that my chicken is mixed I'm moving on to the masa now I'd like to use fresh masa but for those of you that cannot get your hands on fresh masa I decided to make it with my CEQA and you could use the regular Maseca but this one in particular seems to be for tamales so here I have around 6 cups of the Maseca in a large bowl and I will say this after trial and error it seems to be for 6 cups of Maseca or for each cup you want a cup of liquid so here I'm pouring a mixture of juices from the crock pot and some extra chicken broth which made around 4 cups I'm going to add it little by little and start to mix my masa I'm also adding 1/2 cup of melted lard you could use vegetable shortening now if you want to substitute the lard for oil go right ahead but I will forewarn you that it might change the texture of the tamale because as you know shortening does solidify and oil does not so just try it but in all honesty I have never tried it with oil ok so I've added my chili puree a little at a time and now I'm mixing so through this whole process you're going to have to feel your masa so again ultimately I ended up using in total around six cups of liquid and that included drippings extra broth hot water and the melted lard one thing I do notice with working with Maseca as opposed to fresh masa is that Maseca dries out so easily and so quick it's really absorbs any liquid that you give it and it just dries out so at this point I think my masa is a good consistency and I want to taste it for salt and to me I think my masa needs some salt so I'm going to add some salt to taste at this point I've added the rest of the chili puree to the masa and in total I probably mixed my masa for around 15 minutes I'd like to also mention that this thumb on the recipe basically caters to what I like to make in my kitchen and what I mean by that is that I make smaller thinner masa the modest and I think if you like the bigger size the mamma's like some people in my family then obviously the ratio of what I use will not make as many tamales as I get because my tamales are on the smaller side and that's just what I prefer so just keep that in mind so at this point I'm ready to start making tamales here I have my corn husks nice and pliable I have my masa prepared and I also have my meat filling which happens to be chicken thighs by the way if you prefer chicken breasts you can use that as well but I like the thigh so now I'm ready to start putting these tamales together I'm going to take my corn husks and for those of you who have never made the malas are not familiar with it you want to feel for the smooth side one side is a bit bumpier and rougher than the other now of course they both do have bumps and a rough feel to it but one is just a bit bumpy err and rougher you want to find the smoother side and that will be the side that you spread your masa on and again I use a spoon you could use a knife there are even the modest spreading tools that you can purchase but this is what's convenient for me so I'm going to spread it and I like a thin layer again going back to preference if you like more masa go for it but again the end result might be different as far as how many dozens you get so I like fin masa a lot of meat in the filling and then I'm just going to fold it over and once I fold it over I am going to fold it under towards the end and that is my family it's as easy as that now I also wanted to show you that sometimes your corn husks will be too large for the size that you want to make your thumb on it so all you have to do is just rip a little bit off the end until you find your desired size [Music] and I also was going to edit this part out but I thought let's learn from my mistake so as you can see I'm struggling with my masa and right about here I realized I needed to add some more hot water give it a mix to make it spreadable again like this so if you find yourself in the same predicament don't worry have some hot water or some hot broth mix it and continue making your tamales [Music] okay so I got around three dozen the mama's out of this batch I did have some massa left over which I will use for something else so now I'm going to place my tamales in an 8 quart stock pot with a steamer basket but if you don't have a steamer basket you could also do what my grandmother used to do and she used to place a bowl upside down at the bottom of her tamale pot and actually it was larger so it works better in the larger pot and then she would put a plate on top of it and start stacking her tamales but I don't suggest doing this method if your pot is shorter like this one because it will just take up all the space [Music] so now before I place my steamer basket in the pot I've added around four to five cups of water or at least enough water that comes right below the steamer basket you don't want water touching of the mallet and now I'm going to place a lid and start stacking my tamales around it and I actually had an aunt that used to ball up aluminum foil to help guide her while she stacked it with the mothers in like that teepee pattern [Music] so I have managed to fit three dozen Vimanas in my pot so now I am going to take left over corn husks and just cover all of them olives and tuck it in I'm going to place a lid and bring my water to boil lower the heat and allow it to simmer and steam for an hour before checking my tamales [Music] my families have been simmering and steaming for one hour so now I'm going to check one to see if they are done [Music] now the main indication to know if your thumb honey is not ready is if it still sticks to the corn husk and as you can see it is not easily coming out of this corn husk and it's very sticky and tacky so that is a good indication that it needs to cook longer [Music] okay so I let it cook for an additional 45 minutes and I actually let it set for about 15 and now let's see if it comes out easily as you can see my family came out very easily my kitchen smells wonderful and I'm ready to try it it is absolutely delicious I hope you give this recipe a try I hope you like it and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Simply Mamá Cooks

Views: 364,265

Keywords: Holiday Recipe, Christmas Recipe, Christmas, New Years, Recipe, Homecooked, Easy Recipe, Tamales, Chicken Tamales, How to, Dinner Recipe, Holiday gift Ideas, Homemade gift ideas, DIY, Mexican Food, Gochujang Mama, Mexican Tamales, Slow Cooker Recipe, Slow Cooker CHicken, Chicken Thighs, Tex Mex, Houston Texas, Vlog, Potluck, Party food, Holiday Party, Superbowl, Football Party, Como Hacer Tamales, masa, LaVieJolie

Id: Ir5HLOjHJ5c

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2017