Rick Bayless Tamales: Green Chile Chicken Tamales

[Music] hi everyone and thank you so much for joining me here in my kitchen it's time to make tamales now before you go oh i don't know it seems like a huge endeavor number one i'm going to talk through all of the important parts to just make it something that is within your ability to do and number two i'm going to make a small amount so you don't have to think you're going to commit to making five or six dozen tamales because that's the way most tamale recipes are written but you have to have a few things and we're going to start with the steamer because the steamer is absolutely essential these are steamed little packets then that's what makes them so special because everybody just unrolls them now most people think about tamales for christmas time because if you're going to have one of the posada christmas parties in mexico typically there's three things that you have to have to make it work one is tamales and number two is ponche that you're going to serve to everything everyone and then the third thing is a pinata for the kids to break so everybody outside of mexico thinks tamales are only for christmas time and yes they are a special thing but in mexico they have tamales all the time even restaurants that specialize in nothing but tamales 365 days a year so let's talk through each of the ingredients and equipment that we have to start with so let's the because these are steamed let's start with the steamer first okay so i've put all of these different steamers out here for you because some of them will work and some of them won't work let's do the ones that won't work first okay so this is a little steamer that i use a lot and it is a steamer basket that's like that very simple maybe you have one of those collapsible steamers that you would put down in a pot like that it may or may not work depending on what the depth from the steamer bottom or the collapsible steamer basket and the top is because you need about five inches and the tamales have to stand up while you're steaming them this is only about four inches so that won't work same thing happens with these chinese steamers they only give me about three and a half inches over here so that doesn't really work for me um of course in the mexican markets every mexican market that i think i've ever been in there has been a tamale steamer for sale because they're a special kind of thing i have the big one that's the normal size that people would have if you're going to make your five or six dozen tamales but then i found this small one which i just love but i haven't seen it since but it's just a small tamale steamer and you can see that there's a great depth here you put the water in the bottom this piece comes out so that you just fill it with water down there and then you put your steamer shelf in there and then you've got your beautiful little tamale steamer but there are other things that you could choose too besides just your little collapsible steamer in a deep pot which works absolutely fine and to tell you the truth that's what i used for years here in the united states before i bought it tomorrow steamer in one of the mexican groceries if you have an instant pot i will tell you that right now they offer as a you can find these um online it's just a steamer basket that fits right back down in there now what i have done is to put the steamer attachment that comes the sort of steamer shelf that comes with the instant pot down in there first and then you buy this little silicone thing and set it down there and then you put it on steam put the top on like that and then let in steam we're going to steam for about an hour that's what tamales take which you will absolutely love because it will fill the house with this glorious glorious fragrance that is the only the aroma of steaming tamales now let's go on to ingredients since we've talked about different kinds of steamers so first of all you can't make any kind of tamale without masa so if you live in a place that has really good tortillas and you want to do something really special go to the tortilla and ask for masa para tamal or the masa for making tamales it is more coarsely ground and drier than the masa for making tortillas or you can go to a mexican grocery store and buy this very very well-known brand of the the masa for tamales and it says right there on the label in big letters that it is for tamal it is not a white bag it's a cream-colored bag you will notice the difference right away and if you don't see it ask around and say what it where's the masa for making tamales and then you just reconstitute that i've reconstituted that with record this the for this recipe with three quarters of a cup of hot tap water and that's it now this i what i want you to show you is this is the masa that we get from our tortilla that makes the masa for um for us to use in our restaurants um for making tortillas or for making tamales and you see that it will hold together if i just squeeze it so it really is damp it's damp enough to do that and when i'm working with the the reconstituted tamal masa i want it to look sort of like that as well so i can squeeze that together but i can also just let it fall apart so that is our masa part of this now the next thing that we need to talk about is the fat that is used to make tamales so typically in mexico it will be fresh rendered pork fat or what we call lard here now if lard is not something that you're going to choose for religious purposes or reasons i completely support that but if you're one of those people that just came up thinking that somehow lard was a bad ingredient i'm gonna ask you to rethink that because red fresh rendered pork fat that is done at high temperatures tastes like roast pork it's absolutely delicious stuff so i'm going to ask you to think about the possibility of using some lard but where would you get it so i would say you would have to go to a butcher to get it or go to a mexican market but don't just go for the stuff the national brands that's in little bricks there that stuff has very little flavor it's hydrogenated so it's not good for you health wise you would go back to the meat department so you have the good stuff the good lard the one that you maybe use for making carnitas they will help you if you're not going to use the lard then i want to make sure that you get something that's not hydrogenated um you know there's national brands that are out there this is the one that i would use because this is made from all palm kernel oil and it is solid at room temperature so it will be just like any of the other vegetable shortenings that you would be used to working with but today what i'm going to do is to work with the masa that we get from the tortilla so the tamale masa from them and i'm going to use the fresh rendered pork lard yes i'm a lucky guy because we have a pig farmer that gets all or does all of the the pork that we use in our restaurant and he renders this beautiful beautiful lard in most mexican households they do a lot of the beatings of the tamales dough or batter by hand i'm not going to recommend that you do that because it takes a lot of time so i'm going to use just a stand mixer here and i'm going to put the the fat in here and don't worry if all of this is just too much information for you we've got you covered in the recipe that is going to be attached to this video so i put the and i'm not going to tell you the proportions because you'll need to go look those up anyway i'm going to put the lard in here and then i'm going to start the beading i want it to lighten in color and while it is lightening in color and this by the way is not cold and it's not warm it's just at room temperature making it the most pliable that it could be i'm going to add a teaspoon of baking powder to this and a teaspoon of salt and now i'm looking at it and it's already lightened a lot in in color which means that literally it is getting air pumped into it which is what we're looking for if it's very hot in your kitchen when you're doing this you'll want to put the fat that you're using for a brief time in the refrigerator to cool it down a little bit so that you can actually beat some air into it now on a slow speed here i'm going to add this masa in three additions so there went about a third of it make sure it's well mixed in another third of it beat that and then our last third of the masa goes in and that's a really really stiff looking mixture now so we're going to soften it up with a little bit of chicken broth if you are doing these and you want to make them all vegetarian i'm going to make a chicken filling but you could do a vegetable filling but i we could do this all vegetarian and in our restaurant we do do a bunch of them vegetarian i would use this shortening and i would use vegetable stock for it but now i'm going to put in about a cup full of the of this broth but in order for it to sort of get softening up the masa i'm going to do it slowly here i'm just going to pour it in in a very thin stream as it mixes into the moss now i have a cup and a half of broth here because a lot of times you will need that much but usually for me it's about a cup that i need so i'm going to stop before i have used up all of this broth so you can see it now it's starting to look like a thick cake batter and let's see where we are here i'm right at the cup full yeah i think i'm just going to stop with that because i this is the most important thing that i can show you is what the consistency of this batter is supposed to be like um it's sort of like making bread when you're making bread sometimes the flour will absorb more liquid or less liquid so what you're going for in bread making of course is the feel of the bread dough sort of the same thing happens now with this and i'm going to turn it off and then open it up so that you can see what the consistency of this is but look at that it just looks like a a beautiful cake batter it will fall off of my beater like that it's light and fluffy i'm going to put this back on beat it for just another minute to see if i can get more air in it and i'm going to show you the sort of classic test for determining whether you've beaten the masa enough so i'm going to put this back on and beat it a little bit more [Music] okay open this up and i'm gonna just take like a half a teaspoon i'm using it a measuring thing for this half a teaspoon but you don't have to do that at all just a small spoon and i'm gonna take about a half a teaspoon of it and i'm going to put it onto this ice water here and you'll notice let me get the ice out of the way there you'll notice that it just floats okay that means that we have beaten it well and it is it's got enough air incorporated in it that it can float now there's lots of different kinds of tamales i'm going to be making a chicken with green salsa on it steamed in corn husks that are light and fluffy that's very much a central style tamale there are so many different kinds of tamales in mexico they range all the way from the really fluffy ones that i just described in central mexico to almost pudding-like ones that are often wrapped in banana leaves but for today i'm going central style i'm going to do the light and fluffy ones in the corn husk because that's what you're going to be able to accomplish really the most easily of any of the tamales that i could show you in just a second i will be back ready to make the filling with you chicken tamales with a really punchy salsa verde they're some of my favorites they're some of the most commonly found in mexico and we're going to do what you've seen me do many times is to roast some tomatillos garlic and some green chili now you could use any kind of green chili that you have for this this it could be jalapenos it could be serranos which is what i'm using here but if you have some in your garden something that's green and spicy you might want to do that those of you that are real aficionados of spicy spicy food could make an habanero version of this if you would like to all of those things would be great a very classic technique of roasting everything though we are going to do it under a broiler rather than on the stovetop like it would typically be done in mexico i put these all on a rimmed baking sheet i took the tops the little stems off of the chilies and the garlic is still in its papery husk these will go under my preheated broiler here um really close about four inches below the highest setting that my oven offers and after about six minutes or so they will be blotchy black and then i'll flip everything over and we'll roast it for another six minutes sometimes the chilies need to be pulled before that sometimes the garlic does but we'll take a look at it as we're going along here so i'm just going to slide these in there and i will meet you back here when they are ready now i know this doesn't look very pretty but this is what's going to be the best flavor you can see that our chilies are very roasted they've cooled down now on on the sheet here there's juice that they've exuded as they were roasted but i'm going to put everything after i peel this garlic everything into a food processor you could use a blender for this the little papery skin is what really helps the garlic not to burn and you know that burnt garlic is probably not going to be the most delicious thing it can get a little bit bitter but roasted garlic has a lot of sweetness which is why we actually do this part of it so i've got my garlics now all peeled here everything will go into the food processor together including all that juice that's on the baking sheet but you it's i know it's not very pretty but wait till you taste this if you've never done this oh and by the way those of you that don't like to scrub the rimmed baking sheet you can put a piece of foil down and then just get rid of that foil everything will have been roasted on the foil and makes for really easy clean up if you have a silicone mat that would work as well okay so that's all in there now i'm gonna get rid of all of this so that we can make this basic salsa verde i'm not gonna cook it i'm not gonna turn it into a sauce with any um addition of broth or anything because i want this one to be really punchy so that i don't serve the tamales with a salsa now that's very common in mexico rarely do you see tamales being served with a salsa so i want this filling to be like salsa and filling all in one okay so i'm gonna let that run for just a second i don't want it to get smooth and pureed like it was um like out of a can something out of a can i want it to have a little bit of texture still left in there so that looks like it's going to be about the right amount i'm going to scrape because a lot of that goodness went up here on the top of the food processor i'm going to scrape that down in here as well and then all of this will go you'll choose some sort of cooked chicken to be with this i've got a couple of grilled chicken breasts which i'm happy to say you can actually buy now in a lot of frozen food counters so you could do that some rotisserie chicken or if you have some chicken breasts or chicken thighs that you just want to poach in water until they're done make sure that the water is salted so that they have some good flavor to them that's really all you have to do that is coarsely shredded when i say coarsely finely shredded would be to just pull everything apart like that but this is in what i would call coarse shreds so i'm going to mix that into the salsa we're going to we're missing just now a little chopped cilantro and some salt to add to it so in a typical way of chopping cilantro i will take the the bunch of cilantro that i pulled off of here and it's a pretty good amount here that i'm using because i want that flavor to be present all the way through the steaming of the tamales so cutting very thin slices crosswise not taking the leaves off but chopping the stems in with everything and then when i run out of leaves down here i will stop get rid of the the the stems there put that in with the rest of our mixture now i know that that chicken has had a little bit of salt on it already so i'm not going to go overboard with the salt on this i just want to do enough to really season it so i know what that will take here and it's probably about that much so more in that sort of half teaspoon range and this is what you want your filling to look like very simple and straightforward if you have another salsa that you like if you had a jard salsa that you really like maybe you're going to open that jar and put that with your chicken and work with that i just want to make sure that making tamales is not that some that's something that is way off in the distant future but becomes part of everyday thinking in your kitchen so that you could say yeah i'm gonna make some tamales i'm gonna have some people over i'm gonna celebrate a birthday and i'm gonna make some beautiful tamales and take that steamer to the table and just fill the room with that absolutely glorious aroma okay now we're ready to move on to the forming of the tamales now corn hustler available in lots of grocery stores in the united states depending on what part of the country that you're in certainly in chicago we find them lots of places and in every mexican grocery store this is the variety that we find a lot in our grocery stores here it's a product of mexico and it's a little different than the ones that i see in mexico the you'll notice that there's a sort of blunt cut here at the end and the ones in mexico tend to be more of the base of it that curves in actually making it a little bit easier to form a tamale in them okay now the first thing that you got to do is to to soak these so that they become pliable that takes a couple of hours if you wanted to boil water and pour it over i just use hot tap water and and do that the boiling water might speed it along a few minutes but you could soak these overnight if you wanted to but two hours is usually a good amount now you want to choose a dozen really nice leaves here big full ones with no tears in them um and oh look at that one it's really gorgeous that's really really big it's almost too big i'm going to tear off a little bit of that one there and we're going to collect these ones that are a little they're too small to make tamales out of and use them in the steamer to have on the bottom but these are really really very very nice ones if you find some that don't have they're they're not they're broken in the middle you can double them up if that's all you can find but i often will take the ones that are the smaller pieces and put them down in the bottom of the steamer now this is that sort of pasta steamer asparagus steamer i've got water in the bottom of it here and i'm just going to take the the corn husks that are not big enough to use for making tamales and lay them kind of like in a sort of star pattern to cover the bottom of of the steamer that will add extra aroma to all of this now i want to dry these guys off a little bit or we can just do it one at a time as we're working through them and form tamales with them so we'll start here by laying a large corn husk soaked corn husk in front of me with the cut off end toward me the next step is to take about a quarter of a cup i'm going to measure this usually you don't see people measuring this because they know they can eye that amount but a quarter of a cup is a standard sized tamale and i'm going to scoop that right into the center of the base of this corn husk here i want to get all of it out so i'm going to do that you can see why using a quarter cup measure it's a little bit cumbersome after a while and then take a spoon you want to leave about a half of an inch on this end you'll see why in just a second and you're going to make about a four inch square if you will something that's like about like that so you can see that i'm working on i'm working toward this flat end here and i want my four inch square to be in the middle then i'm going to take a portion of the chicken filling and put that down the center there i think that will be about the right amount and using the two sides of the corn husk i'm going to roll this filling in the masa so i'm going to completely cover it like that you can see that then pull these two sides together you can see the outline of the masa in here and where they meet here i'm just going to roll it around like that and then where you see that the masa stops i'm going to fold that under and then that is the standard the most common form for making a tamale some of you have probably so i'm going to stand it up in here um actually these are kind of hefty corn husks so i'm going to pleat it at the bot not pleated i'm just going to really squeeze it at the bottom to make a tight fold there and then just put this guy right here on the side standing up you never want these guys to be lying down and you can see now why you need a deep steamer to accommodate them now there are probably a lot of you have seen very fancy ties there are some people that like to make their tamales and then they fold both ends under like that and they will tie them around that makes a really small tamale that is tight in there never as fluffy i think as the ones that are steamed standing up with an open end to them but sometimes people will take little strands of the corn husk and i will show you this one now as a second version of it and this is actually if you're starting out if you've never done these before you might want to try this thing [Music] but this is the moment that you could employ the little ties so you would bring that up like that and go around and make a little knot in it and that will keep it completely shut most of the people that make tamales for a living they just they don't do that thai part of it but this will keep them in really good shape standing up in here so i've got another 10 or so this might make 13 or 14 by the time we're done but i've got all of those to do and then i will show you what it should look like when we're ready to go to the steaming part of this recipe [Music] you don't want to tie these too tight because they are going to expand remember there's baking powder in them that's one of the reasons that we leave that half inch at the top so they can kind of come up and expand i usually give them just a little tap like that and then fit them down in here now you look at your steamer if there's any open space they will have a tendency to slip down which is not good during the steaming so i've got a couple of balls of foil and i'm going to just make sure everything is kind of tight in here so they're standing up not tight tight but they're standing up nicely and then fill in the little extra space here with a couple of balls of tin foil that will keep everything in position now i've got my water here i haven't turned it on obviously because i was working with making the tamales here but a little trick that everybody talks about in mexico is drop a coin in the bottom of the pot because you don't want to run out of water and you can't really see it very easily so i'm going to put the top on here and then we're going to bring it to a boil over high heat and then regulate the temperature so that we see steam puffing continuously out doesn't have to be at a raging roiling boil but it it needs to be a steady steam uh for this about an hour and we'll come back and we'll check them after that that rattling little penny that i put in there is still going which indicates to me i mean i can hear it and it indicates to me i still have some water now if you don't hear it that means you're running out of water and you'll want to take this thing apart a little bit and put some water in there i always like to put hot water in there so it comes right back to a boil but with a good inch of water you should get through most of your hour of steaming now is the moment we are going to uncover this thing and pull one of these beauties out and make sure that it's cooked okay so here's the way that you would determine if it's cooked or not first of all of course i've got to get the tie off it might be easier for me if i just cut this time like that and then we want to make sure that it it is not sticking still to the corn husk so as we unroll it here see how it just comes apart so that indicates to me that it is completely finished these are going to be very tender at this point most people will tell you to turn the fire off let them stand in the steamer for 15 or 20 minutes they'll still be really really hot but the masa itself will sort of start to firm up and then you'll have a really beautiful oh man look at that i am i'm i'm i'm going to go even though it's going to fall apart tinder here i'm going to they're so light so beautiful so full of flavor i made that salsa pretty spicy so that all of that flavor comes through there if you decide to make tamales for the holiday or any other day i think you're just going to love tackling this recipe

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 302,810

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Id: r80-Aa43rpY

Length: 31min 20sec (1880 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021