Will It Be Sous Vide? Tons of Tamales
Hello chefs and food consumers, and welcome back to another hilarious episode ofWill It Sous Vide? , a weekly column where I do whatever you want with my immersion circulator.
We landed on a tamale this week, which was interesting for two reasons:
- Tamales are pretty damn delicious.
- I have never actually made a tamale and I really enjoy the new culinary learning experience (and it was very powerful).
Luckily, I have a good friend named Amanda who makes tamales and she just got back from a trip to Arizona and brought with her a delicious chili that she toasted. Amanda was kind enough to bring her chili peppers, masu and husks to my apartment and transfer her delicious tamale-making knowledge to my brain. (Disclaimer: Based on what I know about tamales and the people who make them, there are many different styles, recipes and packaging methods . I am from Mississippi, used to cornmeal tamales, although I have never made them, and This is a completely different situation. Unfortunately, it was not possible to test every type in a couple of days, so I tried them in Amanda’s way because she always seems to be very confident.)
First, we soaked the husk in clean water for 20 minutes, and then dried it thoroughly. We then melted one cup of cooking oil (you can also use lard) and beat it with a whisk on my stand mixer until it turned cloudy.
In a separate bowl, we mixed three cups of instant harina mass, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a pinch of cayenne pepper, a pinch of caraway seeds, and a teaspoon of baking powder. Then this mixture was gradually added to the molten fat while stirring with a paddle.
Then we gradually poured the hot broth, continuing to beat with a stand mixer, until we got a homogeneous mixture that could be drawn with a spoon. We then ran a “floating test” to make sure our mass was fluffy enough.
It wasn’t fluffy enough, so we added some more Crisco.
Next, we put together the filling. While I would love to try the delicious pork filling, I thought it would immediately lead to too many variables and wanted to narrow the focus down to masa. (Also, I wouldn’t want to spend hours finishing the meat filling to perfection, only to have it fall apart at the end.) So I decided to use a simple pepper filling (twelve Anaheim fried chili and one dried hatch.) Chili), cheese ( ten ounces each queso fresco, Cotija and hot cheddar, chopped and crumbled) and one large tomatillo.
Then we spread the masa on the husk about two-thirds up. Amanda had a small masa scraper for this purpose, but you can also use a spoon.
We then added our chili mixture.
Then cheese.
Then we wrapped them all up properly.
These children were vacuum sealed and then immersed in a 185 water bath.
Tamales usually takes a couple of hours to cook, but I’m a curious cat and decided to pull out one in an hour. It felt soft to the touch and I didn’t even have to open the shell to say it was still quite runny, so I sealed the bag again and put them back for another hour.
After two hours of sous-viding, I carefully unrolled the husk to find this hot mess (full disclosure: I ate it and it tasted delicious):
Apparently two hours weren’t enough, so the remaining two tamales returned to the bath and I went to the bar. An hour and three cocktails later – I’m a pro – I returned to my apartment excited (hopefully) by a solid tamale.
It turns out that 3-hour tamales with sous-vide look the same as 2-hour tamales with sous-vide. (See the picture above if you’ve forgotten what it looks like). The drunken Claire was disappointing, but not so disappointing, that she didn’t eat a hot plate of tamale and a frozen Three Muscat bar . Drunk Claire went to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, I decided to try again and tossed another vacuum-sealed bag of tamales into the water bath. I had little hope, but four hours later this little lady greeted me:
There were still some problems, but things were getting better. I almost ate the tamale, closed the bag and immersed the beauties with corn husks in the water for another hour. Then finally , after five fucking hours, I unwrapped this:
I put salsa on it.
I ate this. It was cheesy, spicy, tender and delicious. I was happy. I deployed the second one.
It was terrible. I deployed the third and everything was fine. I deployed the fourth, and it wasn’t very good. Thus, in terms of success, it turned out to be 50/50. This, of course, sets us up very well for “that question”: will there be tamales sous vide?
Answer? Um, something like that? Although the tamales did not taste bad, only half of them retained their shape after five long hours of cooking. This is a pretty paltry income. Although sous vide cooking provides a pleasantly humid cooking environment, I think it may be too humid. Although tamale is usually steamed, oil and moisture can escape from the masa, which is not the case with a vacuum sealed bag. Of course, there are other variables as well, such as the thickness of the layer of the mass and the type of fat and filling used, and I won’t mind coming back to this topic in the future, especially if you guys have any suggestions. I want to eat a lot of tamales, even those that are hot; I’m just selfless.