Posted by Erin Morris | Dec 24, 2010 | | 21 |
Every good Tico eats tamales for Christmas (Navidad) and this year I not only ate them, I learned how to make them. I also discovered why Costa Ricans only make tamales once a year – the labor intensive process takes an entire day and is exhausting! But the tamales are scrumptious and I’m going to teach you how to make them or at least make you tired from reading about it. Get jealous –I have 80 in my house right now, waiting to be devoured for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Are you ready?! These are going to be the best tamales you’ve ever eaten!
Prep Work
First, you begin by cooking what could be two separate meals in themselves:
1. Pork Soup(Sopa de Cerdo): water, 5 kilos of big pork chunks, several whole celery, several quartered red bell peppers, rosemary, oregano, cilantro, bay leaves, thyme. Cook all that in your massive stewpot (because everyone has a ridiculously large pot laying around).
2. Saffron Rice(Arroz con Achiote): rice, saffron, finely diced red bell peppers and celery, chopped cilantro.
While those bad boys are cooking, you prep and pre-cook all the veggies:
4 kilos of potatoes cut in half, boiled and peeled
A big bowl (6-8 cups) each of sliced carrots, tiny green beans,garbanzo beans,sweet peas, and sliced red bell peppers (don’t cook these!).
The next step is preparing the leaves that you will wrap the tamales in – plantain leaves (hojas de platano). They are sold in packages by the kilo, pre-smoked and pre-burned. Your job is to cut them up and clean them. These are different than regular banana leaves. Banana leaves are too flimsy – you might have seen banana trees with shredded leaves? That happens because they can’t stand up to the wind, much less function as a tamal wrap. Plantain leaves are sturdier and do not shred in the wind or the tamal stew.
First begin by removing the strong vein along the edge of the plantain leaf.
Then cut the leaves into smaller pieces, alternating between two separate sizes – one about 15 inches long and the other about 10 inches long.
Then clean those cut leafies with a rag – just lightly scrub the funk off each side. But rápido! rápido! – by this time the sun is starting to set and you are ready to be done. Patience – there is much more to do.
After the soup is cooked, the veggies are prepped, and the leaves have been cut and cleaned, it is time to move on to the final step in the prep work – preparing the masa mix.
Masa de maíz is dried ground corn and you can purchase it in Costa Rica pre-ground and pre-moistened, but you will have to grind it yourself if you live in the States. You can find the dried corn in Mexican tiendas (along with the hojas de platano…except they are probably banana leaves instead. Maybe triple wrap your tamales to prevent breakage if you only have access to banana leaves).
So gather up your masa (3 kilos), cooked and peeled potatoes, and set up a food processor next to the massive stewpot.
Start by blending together potatoes with the veggies from the pork soup and one coffee mug full of pork soup broth. Dump into giant mixing bowl and repeat process until all the potatoes are blended with all the veggies from the pork soup.
Now add all the masa to the blended potatoes in amassive bowl. Also throw in two giant handfuls of leftover meat grease from your local butcher shop. Mix really well with your hands. This is fun, it’s like being a kid again playing with your food.
Mix it good!
Mix it real good! …but not too much. It will look like this right before you use the blender to finish the job.
Run the masa mix through the blender, adding salt and chicken stock orbouillon (de caldo o consumme) to taste. Also add more pork broth if needed for consistency – you want it to be about that of creamy mashed potatoes. Empty all of this into yet another giant bowl.
Collect the pork out of the pork soup and cut it into large bite size pieces.
Now gather all the ingredients and set up your workstation for assembling the tamales. In the photo below, you are looking ata smaller, more manageable portion of each ingredient (maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of what wasin each giant bowl). The ingredients were portioned out like this because there just weren’t enough behemothbowls or enough counter space to handle the enormous quantity of ingredients.
Assemblingthe Tamales
Finally!
Take a small plantain leaf and place it on top of a big plantain leaf.Plop a large spoonful of the masa mix in the center of the smaller leaf.
On top of the masa mix, place a spoonful of rice, a piece of meat, a few garbanzos, a few peas, a pepper slice or two, a green bean or two, and 2-3 carrots. Make sure you get at least one of everything inside the tamal, but mixing up the quantities a bit can be fun to make a little variety in the finished product.
Fold the tamale. Raise the edges up lengthwise and fold them undertwice like you would a paper bag lunch. Then lightly flatten, while you fold the left and right sides over the center. You end up with a nice-looking little tamale package.
Take two of these tamal packages and tie them together with natural jute string to make an even cuter tamal package. You can also start singing “green leafy packages, tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things.”
They cook better in pairs.
When the last tamalbundle is tied, they are ready to cook.
Drop them into the humungous stewpot full of pork broth, add more water if needed,cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, start the timer for 30 minutes (keep covered).
After 30 minutes of boiling, disconnect the heat, but it is okay to leave the tamales inside to cool off. Now you are ready for the next step, the final step.
Eat the Tamales!
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21 Comments
Arlynon December 26, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Tamales from Costa Rica are the B-E-S-T!
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erinon December 26, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I was thinking the same thing today! I haven’t had them from all over the world, but out of the few varieties I have tried, Costa Rican tamales are definitely superior.
…we managed to eat all 80 of them. They were suppose to last through the new year!Reply
Lilyon December 29, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Do you eat the plantain leaves?
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erinon December 29, 2010 at 5:37 pm
LOL no! But don’t feel bad, I asked the same thing my first time. And there is even a related joke:
So one Christmas, there is a Gringo in town and a nice Tico family invites him over to share Christmas with them. They feed him tamales and later that evening ask him how he enjoyed them. He responds “They were delicious, but I really didn’t care for the lettuce.”
🙂Reply
Julieon December 30, 2010 at 9:09 am
Wow, Erin. I am exhausted! Look so good though!
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erinon December 31, 2010 at 4:21 pm
They were good…we should have made twice as many!
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DS. Utomoon January 15, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Wow….just likes an Indonesian food ! Like it. Thanks !
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Johnon April 19, 2011 at 12:59 pm
The best tamales.. no doubt about it… and my wife & her mom make the best!
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erinon April 19, 2011 at 4:41 pm
It’s neat to see how each family does it a little bit different. There should be some sort of tamale festival with a cook-off, and the audience gets to judge, mmm. Thanks for stopping by and commenting, John!
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jesseon November 17, 2011 at 4:21 pm
can you use the tortilla flour like maseca
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Erin Morrison November 21, 2011 at 11:59 am
Yes I think so. The taste will be different because the fresh ground masa is obviously more flavorful, but if it’s all you have access to, then yes, it will work.
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ebeon December 5, 2011 at 4:27 am
Wow- those look amazing. Thanks so much for including the recipe. I don’t think I can quite replicate these in Berlin, but I may try 🙂
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Dianeon September 17, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Hola Erin! I’ve yet to comment, but I think I’ve read almost all of your entries by now.. reason being that I, a 21-year-old chica from the US, am planning on making the move to CR by myself here in November or January. There’s a start date in either month for the TEFL school I plan on attending, but I can’t decide which would be a better time! Going in Nov. means spending Christmas in CR, away from my family. January saves that trouble and allows more time for saving $.. but I’m so excited- I want to leave as soon as possible! Did you spend the holidays with a family you met there? I’m planning on staying with a host family for the 4 weeks of the program, but it ends before Christmas.
I’m not really sure what I’m asking you here.. ha, sorry for my rambles. I guess I’m just wondering when you would choose to come if you were me, and how you’ve enjoyed December in paradise!:)
Muchas gracias,
Diane
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Erin Morrison September 18, 2012 at 10:44 am
🙂 Thanks for the comment.
Christmas in paradise is fun, but only if you have good friends and family to share it with. January, February, March… all those months are as dry and gorgeous as Christmas will be, so you won’t miss anything by coming down at the later date. Well, you’ll miss the hordes of tourists. Plus you can use that extra money to travel, so you can see more of the country.
But you might be able to work out a deal to stay with your host family through Christmas and then you get a family to share with and tamales!!! I love tamales. You should see if they’ll let you stay longer before you make up your mind. If you are planning on looking for a job here after the course, it would be wiser to start looking in Dec/Jan.Which TEFL course are you taking if you don’t mind me asking?
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Dianeon September 18, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Thanks for replying! 🙂
I’m definitely wanting to teach and live there for as long as possible (I’ve done enough research to decide that I think I can handle it.) Is it accurate that most teacher-hiring is done around January? Meaning that I’d have the best chance of landing a job if I have a TEFL by the end of Dec, rather than the beginning of Feb? As nice as missing the hoards of tourists sounds, I’ll need to find work pronto!
Good advice on seeing if the family will let me stay through Christmas- beforehand! The tamales look great!! Though I have to admit I get tired just thinking about the process. :p
As for the TEFL course, I’m deciding between Máximo Nivel (which I was unsure of at first, but only read great things about on eslcafe & lonely planet), and Intesol Costa Rica. If you have opinions about either of these or could suggest one you know is legit, I’d be forever thankful!
D
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Erin Morrison September 19, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Teacher hiring is done at the latest by January for the really nice schools (e.g., international schools). Those jobs are really hard to get though so don’t be upset if you can’t get one. In fact, living here requires you be flexible all the time about everything, so try to keep that in mind.
THe good news is that language institutions hire year-round due to high turnover rates and you can practically walk off the boat and get a job at one of them.
I don’t know anything about those TEFL courses, but it sounds like you have done your research… 🙂Reply
Dianeon September 20, 2012 at 2:57 am
Oh so good to hear! I was worried that they ALL hired by Jan! But I guess that wouldn’t make much sense. Thank you! 🙂
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Marielaon December 25, 2012 at 2:21 am
Hi!
I’m the opposite. I’m a Costa Rican living in the US. This Christmas I couldn’t really visited my family back home. I was hoping to be able to make some tamales, the Costa Rican ones anyway. This seems like a lot of work, but I’ll definitely give it a try. If not, I can always go back and get the real deal.
Thanks for sharing. 🙂Reply
Erin Morrison December 25, 2012 at 7:00 am
I’m in the US for Christmas this year and am missing tamales!!! I hope they save me some 🙂
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Tonya Denmarkon March 25, 2017 at 4:07 pm
That looks insanely good! I love dishes that are time consuming like that but are well worth it in the end.
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Erin Morrison March 26, 2017 at 10:30 am
Me, too, like a good Mexican mole!
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