It's All About to Happen: December 2013

This is one of my preferred uses for leftover turkey. How your turkey was seasoned and cooked is not a huge factor in the result but latin flavors in the first cooking of the turkey are a nice touch too. Turkey is worth cooking all year, not just at the holidays so you can experiment with different flavors and preparations.

Tamales include a few sub-recipes unless you can find some of it pre-made for you. You need to make a chile sauce to flavor the filling, and you need to make masa. If you have a preferred Mexican style chile sauce, use it.

Red Chile Sauce

1 tablespoon each ground California Chile, ground New Mexico Chile, Guajillo Chile. You can use other combinations of chiles to your taste preference of course. I have to make my own ground guajillo chile from whole dried guajillos. You can see it's not as finely ground as the commercially ground chiles.
1 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds

Grind these seasonings together. It's OK to use preground cumin and coriander though the flavor is more distinct if you grind them yourself. Mortar and pestle the whole seeds is a fine technique. I've taken to using a cheap propeller coffee grinder for grinding whole spices and making such blends as this.

Spices in my grinder:

Spices after grinding:

4 medium onions chopped
10 cloves garlic sliced thinly
2 tablespoons bacon drippings or olive oil or a combination
2 1/2 cups turkey or chicken stock.

Melt the bacon fat over medium high heat in a large pan. Yes, you can use most any fat for this.

Add the chile spice mixture and stir to bloom its flavors in the hot fat, about 60 seconds.

When it's fully aromatic and blended with the fat,

then add the onion and garlic.

Saute for a few minutes, to soften the onion.

Then add the turkey stock to cover the solids. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer.

Simmer 20 minutes.

Scoop out the solids and puree. I use a hand blender.

Return the puree to the pan. I didn't puree in the pan because it would have splattered badly and the contents weren't deep enough to puree well and evenly. You can use a food processor or blender for this step too, whatever is most convenient for you.

Add 28 oz canned crushed tomatoes.

Combine, simmer another 20-30 minutes stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, soak a package of corn husks in hot water. And cut/pull your turkey into shreds.

Simmering away, be sure to stir it so you don't scorch your solids.

It should be a nicely thickened sauce at the end.

For this batch, i was able to pick up a bag of tamale masa at a latin grocer. While convenient, when you purchase your masa pre-made, you don't have control over things like how much fat they used. Commercial masa has all been very fatty in my experience compared to when I make my own.

Husks on the left, masa in back, chile sauce up front, shredded turkey on the right.

I like to work on a dish towel or paper towel to absorb the water from the corn husk. Lay the husk out flat. The husk should be at least 6 inches wide on the trimmed end. Pick off any corn silk adhering to the husk.

Pull out about a 1/4 cup of masa.

Press it out into a square about 4 inches on a side and about 1/8 of an inch thick. I had some extra masa leftover which you can see at the bottom. I'll use that on the next tamale. Leave about 1/2 inch of space at the trimmed end of the husk. Certainly, you can make longer tamales if you have a longer wrapper.

Spoon on a generous tablespoon or so of chile sauce. More sauce is better than less and provides the moisture for this dish. Darn the flash on my camera!

Top evenly with a layer of turkey.

Add on a little more chile sauce. Tamales tend to be on the dry side so plenty of sauce makes a better tamale.

Fold the edges of the masa together.

Continue rolling to cover the edge. A little sauce leaking out is not a problem.

Fold the bottom up against the tamale filling. Yes, I prefer to make these with gloves on. Dries out my skin otherwise. You can tie the fold to hold it with string or a strip of corn husk, but it's not really needed.

Simply load the tamale into your steamer insert so that the tamale holds the fold in place. I have the steamer resting on its side so that gravity holds everything in place.

Repeat. You'll have some husks that aren't quite big enough for a tamale by themselves. Simply overlap the husks somewhat and 'glue' it in place when you spread out your masa.

Here is my pasta insert being filled with tamales to steam. Lay it on its side as it gets filled up. This way the tamales don't tip over and you can arrange them to hold themselves closed. You don't want to pack it tightly. You want some gaps for steam to move around the tamales.

And up right now that it's full and the tamales won't tip over.

Masa is just about gone as is the chile sauce. Turkey is all used up.

Add water to your pots to come up close to but not touching the steamer insert. You may need to add water to your pot during cooking if you can't hold at least 1 1/2 inches of water in the bottom.

Here is the steamer basket for my pressure cooker filled with tamales. Notice that the tamales are right up near the rim of my pressure cooker. The first time I steamed tamales in this pressure cooker, the masa rose up and blew through the steam release valve. I pack this steamer more carefully now and with a greater clearance near the pressure release.

Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat to just hold the boil. Or with a pressure cooker, bring it up to pressure, then reduce heat to just hold the pressure.