Rachel
- Mar 8, 2018
- 7 min read

Tamales with Pork and Red Salsa

Updated: Jan 28, 2021

Definitely worth the time spent making them. Tamales are a traditional Mexican food. I made mine with pork shoulder, red salsa made from dried chilis, masa made from lard + pork broth + masa harina, all wrapped in a corn husk, steamed, and the result is a lightly spicy and flavorful food (which is extremely delicious). The 4-5 active hours and 10 overall hours spent making these was actually really fun and relaxing. The original recipe is from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gcBGxF0IWI

Note: Tamales can be made with many fillings: e.g. different meats + salsas, beans, cheese, peppers, even sweet fillings!

The recipe is here, and pictures of the process are below:

Ingredients:

~40-50 Corn husks

Salsa:

6 dried guajillo chilis,
1 dried chile ancho
6 (for mild salsa), 8 (for medium salsa) or 10 (for spicy salsa) dried Morita chilis (or 6 dried Pasilla chilis)
¼ onion, peeled and cut in half or quarters
3 garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely chopped
~3/4 cup water from cooked chilis (maybe more/less)
1 ½ tsp salt
1 Tbsp. oil for frying salsa

Meat:

3 ½ lb. pork shoulder (bone in or not)
8-10 cups water
½ onion, cut in half
6 garlic cloves, peeled and squished with the edge of a knife
1 tbsp. salt

Masa:

1 ¼ lb. (20 oz.) corn flour (Maseca brand flour for tamales (will say "Tamal" on the bag)) + 3 cups pork stock = 2 ¾ lb. masa
⅔ lb. (10.7 oz.) lard
1 ¼ tbsp. salt
1 tbsp. baking powder
2 ½-3 cups pork stock

Directions:

Soak corn husks:

In room temperature water (put something heavy on top to submerge them). You can soak them while you prepare the other ingredients.

Pork:

Using a large pot, add the pork shoulder, 8-10 cups water, onion, garlic. Simmer for about 2-3 hours on low-medium heat, flipping every 30 minutes or so, until tender and easily falls apart with a fork.
Let cool 30 minutes to 1 hour before handling. Take the meat out and shred it with two forks, cover, and set aside. Strain the leftover broth into another container, this will go into making the masa.

Salsa:

While the pork is simmering, prepare the salsa. Cut the stems off the guajillo chilis and ancho chili, then cut them in half and scrape out the seeds. Discard the stems and seeds.
Boil all chilis in water until they are soft (~20 minutes).
Add the wet chilis (de-stemmed), ~3/4 cup (maybe more/less) of water the chilis were boiled in, onion, and garlic (NOT THE SALT) to a blender. Blend until smooth (5-10 minutes), scraping down sides as necessary. Your eyes may start to tear up at this point, but trust me it's for the greater good.
Strain salsa through a sieve, using a spatula to scrap against the sieve repeatedly to push the liquid through. Discard solid pieces remaining.
In a clean pot add ~1-2 Tbsp. oil on low heat. Add the salsa + 1 ½ tsp. salt and simmer on low heat for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Masa:

In a large mixing bowl, use your hands to mix together masa harina and 1 cup pork broth. Then add remaining 2 cups, mixing well between each addition. When you’re done the masa dough should come together into a solid mass.
In another bowl, beat (with whisk attachment) the lard until light and fluffy and smooth. Break apart the masa dough made earlier into pieces and add it to the lard and mix by hand to incorporate. Then add the salt and baking powder and mix by hand.
Then add 2.5-3 cups of pork broth, mixing well between each addition by hand. In the end you should get a well homogenized, but wet and very sticky dough (takes about 10-15 minutes total to mix by hand).
To test if the masa is ready, take a small piece and drop it into a cup of water, it should float if it’s ready.

Tamale assembly:

Dry one of the soaked corn husks with a paper towel or kitchen towel, and on the inner edge (smoothest side), use a spatula or spoon to cover the corn husk about 5 inches up from the bottom to within 1 inch from the sides and 1/2 inch from the bottom of the corn husk (think of top of triangle as top, base of triangle as bottom) with ¼ inch thick layer of the masa (see picture below).
In the middle of the masa, add a small handful of shredded pork and ~1 Tsp. salsa. Fold the corn husk in half (like a taco), sandwiching the filling in between the masa. Then fold the open edges over the top, encasing the tamale. Then take the top triangle tip (unfilled) portion of the tamale and fold that downward, and tie closed with a stringy piece of corn husk (see picture below). Repeat with other tamales.

Steaming the tamales:

~15 minutes before you are done assembling tamales, prepare a steamer with 2-4 cups boiling water on the bottom (it should not be high enough to enter the steamer compartment). Set the pot to low or simmer on your stove. A steamer is a pot with a lid that has a raised screen or compartment with holes in it, so water goes in the bottom and the tamales go on/in the screen compartment.
Before adding in tamales, wrap extra corn husks all around the bottom and sides of the steamer compartment.
Add in tamales, open side up, and cover with more corn husks and then a clean kitchen towel.
Cover with lid. Simmer on low heat for 1 hour-2 hours, or until the tamales easily come away from their husks (if you check one and it’s not ready, simply wrap it up and place back in the steamer). Note: Make sure to monitor the steamer to make sure the water isn't boiling too much or too little, you should be able to hear it gently boiling.
Tamales can be enjoyed fresh or cooled to room temperature, wrapped, refrigerated for up to one week or frozen for up to 1 month.
Makes 30 tamales.

Soak the Corn Husks:

Before beginning the tamale making process, weigh down corn husks in a pot of room temperature water. I used two mason jars of sugar.

Pork Preparation:

The pork with water, salt, chopped onion, and peeled and squished garlic cloves.

The pork after simmering for ~2.5 hours. It fell apart easily with a fork.

Pork after cooking and before shredding. Plus LOTS of extra broth, some of which will be used to make the masa.

Pork after shredding.

Salsa Preparation:

Here are all the chiles I used, on the top is the morita chiles, middle is an ancho chile, and on the bottom are guajillo chiles. The ancho and guajillo needed to be destemmed and deseeded (next picture).

After deseeding and destemming the guajillo and ancho chiles (the ancho chile broke into many pieces). The stems and seeds were thrown away.

Then the chiles are boiled until soft.

And the boiling liquid is strained out but not thrown out just yet since some is used to make the salsa!

Into the salsa goes chopped garlic, onion, and salt, plus the soaked chiles and some soaking water (next picture).

Everything is ready to blend.

Blending the salsa (very messy).

Salsa is blended!

After blending the salsa needs to be pushed through a seive to separate out pieces of chile or seeds.

This is the solid waste (next time I may blend more so there's less solid waste)

And here is the liquid that's leftover! This can now be simmered on a stovetop with some oil and then it will be ready.

Simmering the salsa.

And now the salsa is ready! Georgeous!

Masa Preparation:

You start with Maseca Brand Masa Harina (I used instant but you should definitely use Maseca Tamal variety if you can get it because it's a little more coarsely ground.)

Then we add a cup of the pork stock at a time and mix it in by hand with each addition.

After adding 3 cups of pork stock you should get masa dough that's firm but sticks to itself like this.

After removing the masa from the bowl, whip up some lard until it's light and fluffy.

Then break the masa dough into pieces and add it to the lard.

And mix the lard and dough together with your hands.

Then sprinkle on the salt and baking powder and mix in.

After mixing in the salt and baking powder, add one cup pork broth and mix in by hand, breaking up pieces of lard in the dough with your fingers as you go.

After the first cup of pork broth was mixed in.

After the second cup of pork stock was mixed in.

After the third cup (you may only need 2.5 cups) of pork broth was mixed in. Now it is very wet and sticky and we can do the water test to ensure it's ready.

The masa floats so it's ready!

Now everything is ready to go for tamale assembly!

Tamale Assembly:

(1) Dry one of the soaked corn husks with a paper towel or kitchen towel, (2) and on the inner edge (smoothest side), use a spatula or spoon to cover the corn husk about 5 inches up from the bottom to within 1 inch from the sides and 1/2 inch from the bottom of the corn husk (think of top of triangle as top, base of triangle as bottom) with ¼ inch thick layer of the masa. (3) In the middle of the masa, add a small handful of shredded pork and (4) ~1 Tsp. salsa. (5) Fold the corn husk in half (like a taco), sandwiching the filling in between the masa. (6) Then fold the open edges over the top, (7) encasing the tamale. (8) Then take the top triangle tip (unfilled) portion of the tamale and fold that downward, and (9) tie closed with a stringy piece of corn husk.

I'm not 100% if I assembled them perfectly, but they turned out good and there's always room for more practice in the future!

A beautifully prepared tamale!

I had no idea I made exactly 30 tamales, I wasn't counting as I made them, but when I assembled them here there were exactly 30, which is what the recipe specified.

Gorgeous!!

Tamale Steaming:

Take a steamer pot (or pot with metal caulander that fits inside it), fill the bottom with some water (not so much that it rises up into the steamer compartment!!!), add in the compartment, and start adding a layer of corn husks to the bottom and sides (I didn't do the greatest job but that's alright).

Then add in some tamales. My pot was small so I had to cook half the tamales each time.

Cover the tamales with more corn husks.

Then cover that with a clean kitchen towel.

Put the lid on and start steaming. Make sure to monitor the steamer to make sure the water isn't boiling too much or too little, you should be able to hear it gently boiling.